How To Hold The Rose Inside Your Hand Poem by RIC BASTASA

a hand knows how to keep fragility in a secret garden
like that way you hold a moth inside your mouth
feeling the flapping of its powdery wings,

you know how to hold the rose inside your hand with all the sweetest intention not to break any of its red petals.

hold me the way i hold you. Keep me the way i keep you.
At night i have not spoken a word about it.

to hold a rose is to hold a secret which to yourself you cannot even mention.

if you keep that secret the rose will be alive and it can even have that desired eternity for flowering for all the seasons.

i have not met anyone like that yet.
This is the eternal wish of the dead well.
The dream for water far exceeds the dream for light
that windows have claimed as theirs
prior to the dawning of a dream.