Thorns without roses: there is no color in the dark

   It's interesting how the rose garden running along my driveway and at the rear of the house is so unlike it was just a few short months ago.  Now there are pruned, woody stumps, weathered skeletons stuck in the ground, waiting for Spring's warmth to push stems past thorny snares, to burst foliage-thrusting shoots, and to penetrate the world with blooms of colors.  Photos beg to even faintly tell the story of senses flooded with beauty locked away in decaying memories, unspoken time-ravaged words tangled along the edges of tasks that seem less futile than remembering, yet smell of vanity and affectation, dusty, remote, curious, wonderous in the moment of first sight until it takes on the qualities of breathing or sleep; then time, burning with the substance of matter, scatters the core of a person into oblivion, into the fetters of the disintegrating self riding the dissipating wave of this: being.