January is on the Wane

Jamie Dedes

after Sor Juan Inez de la Cruz’ Rosa divina

January is on the wane leaving behind early dark
and champagne hopes for the genus Rosa.

Garden roses want pruning now, solicitous cultivation.
Layer shorter under taller, drape on trellises
and over pergolas, the promise of color and scent,
climbers retelling their stories in a ballet up stone walls,
an heirloom lace of tea roses, a voluptuous panorama
rhymed with shrubs and rockroses in poetic repetition.
Feminine pulchritude: their majesties in royal reds
or sometimes subdued in pink or purple gentility,
a cadmium-yellow civil sensibility, their haute couture.

Is it the thorny rose we love or the way it mirrors us
in our own beauty and barbarism, our flow into decrepitude?
They remind of our mortality with blooms, ebbs, and bows
to destiny. A noble life, by fate transformed in season.
Divinely fulsome, that genus Rosa, sun-lighted, reflexed.

And January? January is ever on the wane.

©2017 Jamie Dedes

One Lifetime After Another

Jamie Dedes

one day, you’ll see, i’ll come back to hobnob
with ravens, to fly with the crows at the moment
of apple blossoms and the scent of magnolia ~
look for me winging among the white geese
in their practical formation, migrating to be here,
to keep house for you by the river…

i’ll be home in time for the bees in their slow heavy
search for nectar, when the grass unfurls, nib tipped ~
you’ll sense me as soft and fresh as a rose,
as gentle as a breeze of butterfly wings . . .

i’ll return to honor daisies in the depths of innocence,
i’ll be the raindrops rising dew-like on your brow ~
you’ll see me sliding happy down a comely jacaranda,
as feral as the wind circling the crape myrtle, you’ll
find me waiting, a small gray dove in the dovecot,
loving you, one lifetime after another.

©2017 Jamie Dedes

Jamie Dedes: Freelance: poetry, short stories and feature articles. Blogger: “Poetry champion” at The Poet by Day featuring underrepresented voices, poetry initiatives for peace, sustainability and social justice and poetry news, events and publication opportunities. Debut coming: Coffee, Tea and Poetry, which you can bookmark now. Founded: The Bardo Group (virtual) in 2011, founding/managing editor of The BeZine and, in 2012, began an annual September virtual event, The BeZine 100,000 Poets for Change. Former writing gigs include associate editor to the California Job Journal and newspaper columnist, On the Job Front, for six years.

The BeZine April 15th, 2017, Issue will be dedicated to (Inter)National Poetry Month—I am a Contributing Editor and serve as the lead editor for this issue. Please check it out! —Michael