This is a re-write of an old fav, The Poem As A Rose. Thanks again to the quote from Vesna Perkovic's home-page. LOL K xx

"Poetry is not to be understood; it is to be felt... to be loved. To try to understand poetry is like touching a rose with innumerable thorns. To try to feel a poem is to lovingly hold a rose without a single thorn. And to love a poem is to grow immediately into the beauty and the fragrance of the rose itself." Sri Chinmoy

THE TIGHTLY-BUDDED ROSE

Running my fingers lightly across
the tip of the compacted petals,
I make a circle with my thumb and forefinger.
Passing them over the head,
they run the length of its long-stemmed shaft.
My seared palm oozes scarlet,
but is mended the moment
it softly journeys up again;

understanding is between us.

I feel a uterine response:
A diver arcs and enters water
without making a ripple;
powerful arms pull him slowly down
until, trampolining off the seabed,
he twists and turns weightless slow-motion,
half pikes and summersaults
within my hidden depths.
Boof! Aah! Aurora borealis erupts;

I relax and sigh, at peace.

Laying the stem lightly across protruding hip bones,
my tensed abdomen sinks concave away;
I feel this bloom like a secret concealed
in the hidden place of my womb,
cocooned there in love.
Its fragrance rises like the scent of hayfields
drifting through my bedroom in June.
My lips moisten and part, my throat throbs
and I am intoxicated by a heady suffusion.

Yielded I am taken –
we are completely one.