Enter into this garden and

swear by everything holier than flowers,

to call everything by its name.

Watch the scarlet laughter of roses,

like children conceived in the search of nectar.

Watch their lush unfurling and

call it petal. Not boy.

Watch the scarlet, and even as a thorn grows

in your oath, call it scarlet. Not blood.

Reach for the soil where it thirsts and call

it a season. Not country. Not where the skies withhold rain. Not where the

earth is softened only by blood.

At the edge of this garden, the earth is tender.

Call this tenderness a seed, and watch the boy sprig into return.