A Living Rose

It's dark outside.
Not a menacing black darkness just a swampingly heavy dark grey.
And it's not at all sombre either, I mean I wouldn't be afraid to walk down to the end of the road and turn left and go to the pub.
And I will go to the pub but not tonight.
Maybe one night next week.
I'll see.

But tonight outside there is something other than night time, there is colour.

A single stout bright yellow rose over-hangs my path and as it hangs it wonders where Summer has gone?
And as it wonders it also ponders its fate. And its fate is to be turned into stone by the first cold blast of winter, its velvety petals made brittle by night after night of hard hard frost.

I feel something for that rose.
I feel pity.
Because there isn't any escape for it, like there is for some of us. It can't do a bunk or hide its head in the earth or run away to a warmer place, it has to bear tingling Autumnal afternoons and bitter Winter nights. It has to accept Mother Nature's decisions.

I wish I could help.
Help it in some special way, or help it in a simple way. I want to protect it somehow. But I can't, and to feel pity for a flower is such a silly thing to feel.
How can one feel pity for a flower?

I suppose I could sever it from the mother bush and then lay it in between blue tissue and then close a book on it.
It would then be preserved like an bug in amber.
At least that way it would remain forever young and beautiful.
If a bit dead.
I'll see.

It's much darker now and the dim light from my porch lamp is giving a blueish glow to the garden but I can still see the bright living yellow rose.
So my small garden is a kingdom.