Ode to the Fact of the Bloom

A rose rotten may bloom?

But my future tending

Will only lead to ruin.

Sharp it bled,

From a corpse risen,

While tending.

A refuge from rumination,

Facing hands, inclining,

Striking upon the hour.

I

The rose in Rouen does not bloom for the pilgrim.

It is a sharp fact in the dirt,

rotten at the root, indifferent to the eye.

There is no miracle in its arrival,

only the persistence of the soil.

The future-tending is not a path to a better self;

it is the labor of hands that have stopped asking for a destination.

It leads to ruin.

Not the ruin of tragedy, but the ruin of a system—

the point where the scaffolding of "why" finally collapses

under the weight of the present.

II

Rumination is the noise of a car that matches its driver.

All signal, no substance. A performance of meaning.

The refuge is found when the air thins.

It is found in the contact with the thorn,

where the wounding is not a metaphor for pain

but a sharp reminder of location.

"Sharp it bled."

The blood is not a sacrifice.

It is the evidence of being here,

without the protection of a belief or the costume of a saint.

The corpse risen is the unfinished past

standing still enough to be touched,

no longer a ghost, but a source.

III

The faces do not judge.

They incline because the mechanism has reached its limit.

The hands of the clock are not pointing toward a fate;

they are simply marking the end of the count.

There is no magpie to offer a sign.

There is no symmetry to confirm the journey.

There is only the strike upon the hour—

a sound that does not require an echo.

The walk continues because walking keeps attention honest.

The road does not close.

It simply ceases to hold the expectation of a result.

The strike is absolute.

The agreement is met.

One.