595 and 596

Two roses love with something pure and free,

with vivid colors, and the scents of spring;

but cannot match the love that has the tree,

whose passion is as rope compared to string.

Whose many years make more than petals fall,

whose leaves bear beauty that the rose can’t know.

Whose stalk bears the offending wind while tall,

and whose arms reach wherever love might go.

The roses wonder, resting in the shade

of trees, how their less beautiful love feels.

I wondered, too, if true love could be made

after age robbed me of my youth’s appeals,

and find it does. I want for trees, and see—

no rose could love as well the whole of me.

~~~

God looked into a tiny petri dish

of germs. And there they seethed, much as germs do.

They spread throughout the surface as they wish,

and with their reckless abandon they grew.

But grew not where the particles he wished

they’d eat were in abundance. So, with care,

he dropped a drop of nuisance in the dish,

that drew the wayward germs he loved right there.

Not that the nuisance was the best of all,

not that it held more than they had as yet,

but as a horn, a microphone, a call

of things his germs had not as yet quite met.

Can you think of his nuisance even now?

The man or church you hate he does allow.