Daily the beatitudes.
Phosphorus struck in midnight air.
Flame cupped against rain.
Deadheaded rose, crowned with bees.
Daily the cut arrangements
threaded in chain link, yellow tape
dividing yesterday’s gunfire
from today’s erasure.
The roses are edged with bruises.
The roses—American red—absorb the floodlit street.
The roses hang nightlong in their jagged
mourning. Scent the air
with mottled plum.
Ask only to open,
once,
prophesy and die.
© Karen Rigby
First published in The Spectacle.