A Shattered Rose

The slick cliff'd river smears shiny

blue-green sliding waters

across richly wooded chateau-lands;

 

hurrying through honey-scarred falaises,

cat-mouthed where toffee sandstones

arced onto sleeping innocents beneath.

 

A country blessèd and blighted both,

in equal measure (as aeons bequeath)

full with easy money, and its deadly past.

 

April shades to May. The weed

that chokes the brave Dordogne grows ever fast,

braid' with myriad whiten-bloom, its taunt

 

in chattering rapids, music for drinkers

at La Roque-Gageac tourist haunts.

Then a drunkard takes a single rose,

 

dips blithely into boiling gas, lets fall

red petals like tinkling glass on ancient stone,

saying “This is you, when you're on your own”,

adding - :

“Never regret a single thing”.

 

Chris Hubbard 2018

Mayrals, Dordogne

France