The Metal and the Flower

Intractable between them grows a garden of barbed wire and roses. Burning briars like flames devour their too innocent attire. Dare they meet, the blackened wire tears the intervening air. Trespassers have wandered through texture of flesh and petals. Dogs like arrows moved along pathways that their noses knew. While the two who laid it out find the metal and the flower fatal underfoot. Black and white at midnight glows this garden of barbed wire and roses. Doused with darkness roses burn coolly as a rainy moon: beneath a rainy moon or none silver the sheath on barb and thorn. Change the garden, scale and plan; wall it, make it annual. There the briary flower grew. There the brambled wire ran. While they sleep the garden grows, deepest wish annuls the will: perfect still the wire and rose.