THE ROSE GARDEN

'The Rose Garden' (Carl Frederick Aagaard, 1833-1895)

I wrote this poem in fondest tribute to my dear grandmother, Gertrude Timmins, who, throughout the summer each year, would spend many happy hours most days in her garden of roses, lovingly tending their showy blooms, and where as a child I too spent many equally happy hours with her. Sadly, my Nan and her garden are both long gone now, but for me they are captured forever within the kindly mirror of Memory, and for the rest of the world within my verses here.

THE ROSE GARDEN

Each sunny Summer afternoon
Amongst her roses royal
A widow old as Time itself
Laboriously would toil.

Her roses grew like ruby crowns
‘Midst thorns and rich green leaves.
So full of life, they seemed to speak,
Or so she would believe.

They lived for Beauty, Truth, and Life,
Like crimson furls of fire,
Whose rosy petals upwards soared,
E’er seeking to be higher.

Their scarlet hearts beat long and loud;
They only lived, it seemed,
To keep their beauty fresh and true,
Or so the lady dreamed.

For though the plants around them drooped,
They stayed unchanged through Time,
As if their very beauty gave
Them Life and Peace sublime.

And even when their own leaves died,
Their blooms rose up still higher –
Their love of Beauty burning more
Than any scorching fire.

They were their owner’s greatest joy,
For them she journeyed on,
Through Life’s strange world of constant change,
Her younger years far gone.

Till one fine morn she passed from sight,
Dismissing Life’s dark lane,
And to her flowers her soul returned,
Ne’er leaving them again.

Perhaps one day her form we’ll glimpse
Through Summer’s sunlit hours –
A Queen amongst the whispers of
Her bowing court of flowers

THOUGHTS OF A DREAMER

This is one of many poems written by me that attempt to convey in words a detailed picture, or, more specifically in this particular instance, a mood-picture – combining the subtle changes of light and sound that attend the coming of day with the birth of new thoughts and aspirations that accompany my own awakening.

THOUGHTS OF A DREAMER

Softly the skies part their star-dappled curtains,
Drifting from sight as the shadow of Morn
Lights up their world with her heavenly candles
Held in the warm golden hands of the dawn.

And as I watch, all alone with the morning,
Thoughts dance and ripple from dream-spangled eyes,
Racing in silence like ebony islands
Gliding through twilight ‘neath faraway skies.

Onward they soar through the shimmering moonlight –
Guiding them gently through sapphire seas,
Hushed by the whispering winds of the evening,
Soothed by the murmuring songs of the trees.

Far from the morning that beckons before me –
Stirring my mind with mellifluous strains –
Onwards they fly to where moons shower their teardrops
Downwards from Heaven as pearl-polished rain,

Sweeping the cosmos in gleaming crescendos,
Spiralling softly round turrets of dreams,
Sparkling through colonnades hewn out of starlight,
Shooting past filigree, fountain-borne streams,

Fading from sight as the morning now greets me,
Sweeping my dreams from awakening eyes
Far to the evening like pale ghosts of autumn,
Leaving me gazing at bright newborn skies –

Laughing through mirrors of radiant sunlight –
Lighting my life like a scintillant shore
Softly caressed by the ocean’s reflections;
New worlds are calling – and dreams are no more.