Deva Rose

- When devas (beings in the god realm) die, their agony is in having wasted their gifts and in seeing what is to come.

Sad rose
a deva dying.
Her petals fall,
her sweet felt
flesh to ground,
where aphids
(black dots on red-brown)
or mites or other crawlers
other cancers
eat her still breathing skins.
She weeps, knowing she owes them
from so many lives.

Rose, a deva dying
knows now
beauty does not fly between lives,
how she, like others
like grubs, must fly between
and rise (where?) again.

O black earth,
the rose hangs up her eyelids
her deva cries
her dying
her self-lies
that beauty caresses the infinite sky.

Precious breath of late summer,
her tears, her weeping
her watery eyes see bleary imperfections
rising on red lips inviting
lids to close
to dull pain with sleep.

Sleep O rose,
and sleep Death,
her flesh whispers falling.