Will we move to a new home before we die?
Will our children fall in love? Can we love our neighbors
as much as we love their old black dogs? We don’t know!

We don’t know how long we’ll work at jobs we hate,
or labor at what we love — or whether we’ll ever unscramble
our dreams to make sense of family and friends.

How long before every continent is rocked by rising water?
How long until the sky turns brown forever,
and space aliens decide to rescue us?

Or maybe they’re already here, unseen, like many of us,
until we visit each others’ eyes and extend a paw to say hello.
We don’t know. We don’t know much of anything.

I didn’t understand half the words you spoke at dinner.
Maybe I’m not intelligent or maybe I’m not trying.
I don’t know — I doubt if you know.

I do know roses from my garden, petals like secret flesh,
incandescent green leaves, thorns with blackening tips.
And I love them.

I love those brooding, heartbreaking roses, dripping with rain.