Late Spring: Tropical Sunsets and Thunderstorms

Last night, we were listening to the nightly news and the boom-boom-boom of a distant thunderstorm made us mute the anchor-woman to listen.  The booms came on a regular basis from several different directions, dancing around us like a moving conga line.  We waited and waited for the soft hush of falling rain or for the crackle of lightning, but the booms tangoed away, leaving us as dry as we had been the day before. 

When I watered the geraniums and zinnias that are waiting to be planted in my back garden last night, they had drooped over the edges of their containers.  They need to be in the ground, but the ground is cracked, and I'm worried that there isn't enough moisture for them to take hold in the garden.  I was hoping that we'd get rain last night so the ground would be a little less parched.  No such luck.

In spite of the rain, the Tropical Sunset roses that are blooming in my front garden are fiery and painterly this morning.  The roses start out a deep orange when they're still tight, but as they open, their colors change to a lighter orange streaked with golden yellow, then to peach, and when they are finally open, the peach has lightened even more and the yellow become a little pale, just as sunsets do when they're fading.  The blooms are so perfectly painted with streaks of color that it seems some fine other-worldly brush has deemed them to be more artistic than any other creation.  This is the reason I love roses so much.

And for today's poem, Edna St. Vincent Millay's voice seems appropriate.

Sonnets 06: No Rose That In A Garden Ever Grew by Edna St. Vincent Millay


No rose that in a garden ever grew,

In Homer's or in Omar's or in mine,

Though buried under centuries of fine

Dead dust of roses, shut from sun and dew

Forever, and forever lost from view,

But must again in fragrance rich as wine

The grey aisles of the air incarnadine

When the old summers surge into a new.

Thus when I swear, "I love with all my heart,"

'Tis with the heart of Lilith that I swear,

'Tis with the love of Lesbia and Lucrece;

And thus as well my love must lose some part

Of what it is, had Helen been less fair,

Or perished young, or stayed at home in Greece.