A Rose is a Rose

When is a rose not a rose?
When its color is bleached from its petals?
Like draperies that have been stripped of their color
By the unforgiving rays of the sun?

When it is distorted and misused,
Or stepped on and beaten?
When it is left in the heat without food or water
Like a riverbed parched by a summer’s rainless days?

Can it remember its former beauty?
Will its submission to death be final?
Or will this respite be brief …
Like the cool front of an upcoming storm.

I know of such a rose –
Battered and beaten,
But determined and willing to survive –
Alive, alive, alive!

A long battle it waged.
Drawing strength from stem and leaf.
As a hurricane from the sea gains energy,
This rose ever blossoms, delighting in the ecstasy of life.

– Eric Druten