The scent of roses

I could always smell the roses

When I was in the kitchen

Oozing up from that near-dead

Plant my grandfather

Put behind the house

Just after the family moved in

After the war

A decade before

I came to live there

A living poem

With withering limbs

And a scant handful

Of blooms sticking out

From the end of mostly

Dead branches

The plant somehow surviving

From season to season

Spouting up again

After each winter’s snow

Always managing

To push out a handful

Of flowers

Whose scent filled the air

And carried into the kitchen

Especially on very warm days,

A plant still there

After my grandfather died

And my grand mother

Moved out,

Still lingering in me

A living memory

Reborn each time I catch

A whiff of rose

On warm summer days,

Me still that little boy

Drenched in the scent

Of my grandparents’ love poem,

Seeing them still

Holding hands on the back porch

As sunset falls into evening

And then into the deepest dark

The scent of roses

All around them