ode to an autumn rosebud

A hint of smoke
fogs the garden
as fire spirits
have their last dance
on the ruins
of Summer's decadent estates,
and damp-dark green leaves
begin the colorful contortions
of their yearly wind-blown diaspora

Other roses of the garden
(neatly presented
in folds of floral perfection)
have seen the sweltering stir
of summer days,
and have known the serene excitements
of moon-light, jazz, Mojitos,
and open mystic doors;
Even others have
been dried, pressed,
and deified in the houses
and the star-touching pyramids

But this poem is not for them
or us,
but for a young one
just beginning his journey,
narrowly oping
his thorny green arms to the world:
showing to man, woman, and sun
the majestic deep-dark red
of the first edges
of his still retracted mystic being

As before,
he hears the stories, the sermons,
and the boasts
of the many others,
and he knows the books of the Gods
and the burning bush:
Atlas, Orpheus, Kerouac,
Elliot, Elliott and Pound

But, like the victim-hero
of Hesse's "Beneath the Wheel,"
he's been drilled, tutored, and deceived
until he wants
to hang, snap, and swing (clipped)
in cold, pulseless Elysium

But wielding will
and Promethean passion,
he shakes and defies the advice
into symphonic white sound...
and in that naive, Herculean inspiration
of first free sunlight,
he sees the season
truly anew,
as, yet not as
Van Gogh, Tesla, or Picasso:
the glow and the glory,
yet not the assumed pathologies
of egalitarian access
to expanding brave new worlds
of knowledge, empowerment, and truth