War of the Roses

Fury, consider love!
Is not defiance your risk?
With sweet scarlet voice
your lie takes root.

See the clustered petals
flushed russet,
bent to your untamed blight,
forced now to entertain
the moon,
         the stems,
                   the stones!

You take the beautiful
and for the essence of a smile
you
proclaim their fate.

Yet here,
Where mist covers green-edged slopes
Where rain meets mud-spattered stones –
the Rose, alone, endures.