Grace and chutzpah painted
her paper-skinned face steel blue.
Thoughts of pale tea roses
distracted me, taunting.
A new hybrid of grandmother
wilted in my hands.
Roots cut by time gave way,
toppling the prize-winning rose.
Sanding her thorns to bumps
took years of family
and housework; floods and droughts had nothing
on the tolls of hard living.
One time, we transplanted
her roots into sand, hoping root rot
would not take her from us.
The best thing about sand
is that you cannot distinguish
one grain from another.
I remember wishing
she was garden variety
and not floribunda.
© 2003 Jason C. Jones