What saint strained so much,
          Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
             —Theodore Roethke

I’ve weeded their beds, put down manure and bark dust.
Now comes the hard part: theoretically
It has to be done, or they spend their blooming season
In a tangle of flowerless, overambitious arms.
So here go pruning shears in spite of the thorns
That kept off browsers for all the millennia
Before some proto-dreamer decided roses
Were beautiful or smelled their unlikely promise.

Reluctantly I follow the book and stunt them
In the prescribed shapes, but throwing cuttings away
Over the fence to die isn’t easy.
They hang onto my gloves and won’t let go,
Clutching and backlashing as if fighting
To stay in the garden, but I don’t have time or patience
To root them in sand, transplant them, and no room
In an overcrowded plot, even supposing
They could stand my lame midhusbandry.
So into limbo with all these potential saints.

Already the ladybugs, their bloc-dotted orange
Houses always on fire, are climbing for aphids,
And here come leaf-rollers, thrips and mildew
To have their ways. I’ve given up poison:
Those flowers are on their own for the spring and summer.
But watching the blood-red shoots fade into green
And buds burst to an embarrassing perfection,
I’ll cut bouquets of them and remember
The dying branches tumbling downhill together.

Ted, you told me once there were days and days
When you had to garden, to get your hands
Down into literal dirt and bury them
Like roots to remind yourself what you might do
Or be next time, with luck. I’ve searched for that mindless
Ripeness and found it. Later, some of these flowers
Will go to the bedside of the woman I love.
The rest are for you, who weren’t cut off in your prime
But near the end of a long good growing season
Before your first frostbitten buds.
You knew where roots belonged, what mysterious roses
Come from and were meant for: thanks,
Apology, praise, celebration, wonder,
And love, in memory of the flourishing dead.