The rose is a memory, its aroma a time machine. Its transience condenses a poignancy, an urge to savour the moment as the sweetest joy. Built of light and sugar as it is, how could it not be sweet? How could it not whisper-sing of the finest days. It is indeed the bonniest flag of love, it’s standard bearer in the summer breeze. To linger near is to realise a state of once elusive calm. Live in this garden o’rose, rooted deep and strong. Drink the rain and sun the same. Bask in beaming birdsong. Rose, live your days, live well each one.
A pumpkin sun pride-inhaled the sweet autumnal air. To the observant eye it did swell full-large. Its rays were radiant smiles indeed, alighting as golden butterflies that believed us the best of blooms. What would the red-gold leaves be without its blessed light? How could they be painted so gay, so warm, so bright? Early though it was, the day opened up as a highway heading beyond sunset and starry night.
All twelve points of the clock were demarcated with alligator teeth. Even the trite ticks, the trite tocks, arrived as clouds of muffled edge, soon to dissipate into a formless fog of deep-set cold. Alba stared, her loathing escalating to a feverish peak. She traced its scaly-skin rim, its scaly skin face, its femur and tibia hands - if that’s what they were. It was a gruesome thing built to measure the era of monsters. Flammable, she thought, and her mind sought the location of a match, a lighter, and perchance an accelerator.
Slanting rain, volleys of icy spears, slice through milky baby's breath. Oblivious puffs arise to punctuate her newborn dreams, dreams that converse with wisdom-bruised stars. Drumming. Drumming. The rain bolts down. Striking, striking, hard enough to rebound. Dirty streets stutter clean within smog's tidal wash. Street-lamps blink on with a golden flood. How we wished for that glow to foreshadow any fireside hearth.
“One thing an ocean of caviar will teach you,” said Bruce, “is that those fish eggs belong to the water. The finest things in life can’t be bought and sold, enjoyable though they can be. Give me a mansion without love and I have nothing. Yet still, I would not live in a hovel. I would not dwell in the dirt and cold for the sake of appearing humble. So, what I’m saying is, heroes suffer more than most; that’s part of this way of living. So, take the good times when they come and let them warm your soul, ignite your smile and bring your feet to a merry dance. Yet these trappings of wealth are but chains and locks.”
From each gentle raindrop came a fingerprint drawn in light. On top of the smudged trees of autumn, it was as if the very water was on fire. The air had that aroma, the one that comes when wet leaves begin to turn into new earth. How I loved the sound, the gentle percussion, as if the lake were a drum for the heavens. As my skin goose-bumped and a shiver travelled my spine, I knew it was time to head for home.