Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks November 2014: Remembrance | Page 17

The Last Rose of Summer
Diarmaid De Frates
Wilted leaves adorn the trees of our mourning place,
Memories of you glisten in my eyes as daylight dies
and fades to nothing, a whisper on the wind.
‘It’s for the best,’ I tell myself, as I stand there alone,
looking down at where there used to lie only one
beneath the weather-washed stone, A solitary, yellow
fabric rose smiles up at me, catching the final moments of the
Summer sun.
The Rose refuses to fade, a constant light in the early dusk,
Its very fiber delaying its inevitable rot.
All that is, does end, but this Rose will not.
But this is not a Rose, not as I knew the word, Rosie.
You are now, as you always will be, grandmother,
The Last Rose of Summer

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