A Silk Rose Poem by Lonnie Hicks

She made me a silk rose
for my summertime;
thornless
and I
in youth's haze
mistook it as gesture only
and fed it to my ego.

She leaned to kiss me in Summer Light
a gift she'd never offered to anyone before;
I took in her breath blithfully
she exhaled
merely smiling
her wise smile
older than her years;
twilight shadows playing upon her face
as I oar'ed the boat
behind her house
she drinking in my rough vitality
and I
realizing that Beauty had given Beast his first kiss.

I reach for her
sensing
her undeployed innocence
caressing it in my mind
seating it in my body
drinking it
as she sat across from me
smiling her gentle gaze
we both
then
ceasing to need
to row that boat
paused;
gentled by the river currents
oars now floating away
we both
bewitched in the gloaming
breeze blowing
in her hair
the sinews of my heart parting
releasing those tiny realizations
of gifted moments
we most times
understand as human gifts
only in later years.

Years pass and the river is before me now
I conjure that moment past
and your silk rose
and if it is not too late

offer you
these
words
in my memory's caress
and a single
rose-lensed
kiss.