Not the rose formed but the reaching towards it,

each citizen’s thumb bloodied in the necessary work,

in this distributed parliament of pruning where

the minister’s shears meet the small child’s plastic

scissors, both honing toward the same impossible bloom.

 

See how fairness grows intricate sideways first,

rhizomatic, before it dares go vertical:

the underground democracy of root-speak,

nitrogen passed hand to hand beneath the visible,

where power might learn its first humility.

 

We are the gardeners who live in the garden,

and our wounds fresh become the bloodied opening,

with each thorn we feel the wildness,

with each cut we elect the possible,

to shape this rose towards the manifest.

 

This is not just beauty’s achievement set

but beauty’s daily argument with chaos,

as the rose bush of fairness flowers in the

plural of attention, where every hand that

bleeds into the earth becomes the living soil.

 

9/11/2025