Sunday, August 30, 2020

Last Rose of Summer

Image

You can fool some of the people some

of the time, but others take notice that

enticements are meant to forestall critics

whose moans of entitlement give way to

a purposeful feint from the most practised

and powerful of forces as she performs her

age-old pantomime of conciliation to charm

and beguile. The prospect of the inevitable

sits poorly with the spiritual descendants 

of ancient Greece's Demeter where the ascent

into winter was analogous to a descent into

the underworld, a hellish place where the

bounty and beauty of earth's growing things

are subsumed when ice and snow defeat their

defences. Nature devises brief compensations

meant to allay fear and resentment in her

dispirited critics coaxing into bloom retiring 

roses to pacify the grief and console the misery 

of gardeners left without purpose and joy. Her

resonating message : once again next year. 


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