[Gregory Dowling]

And this remarkable one-sentence poem by Rachel Wetzsteon:

Seeing Red

Day after day, like a visiting general
inspecting sluggish troops or a scholar hot
on a dead man’s trail, I passed the rows of flowers
bundled into bouquets outside the store

where people make their own salads, observing how
the petals of fancy breeds fell sooner
than those of plainer ones, noting that
the bundles would form a spectrum ranging

from dusty pink to deepest scarlet
if I lined them up in proper order, until one day,
dragging my frail brain—and along with it a heart
made frailer too by a recent,

remarkable turn of events—past the store,
I knew that for all the faculties a sudden,
unexpected blow to the head takes away (skill
at ranking petals vanished, names of colors spun

like leaves in my brain’s windy lobes), there is one great thing
it gives and gives: the candor to be able to say,
at the scene of a red and fragrant chaos,
in a low voice choked with wonder, These are roses.