The Forgotten Rose of Eldermere
Where ivy strangles stones that time has bowed,
A garden sleeps—its breath but whispers now—
And there, where shadows knit their solemn vow,
An old man treads, his footsteps slow as rust,
Through labyrinths of memory and dust.
His name, once bright as dawn on dew-kissed fields,
Now lingers faint, like chimes the winter steals.
Silas, they called him—guardian of the green—
But decades since those tender tongues have been.
The gate, half-hinged, moans like a widowed dove,
As thorns embrace his palms, a bitter love.
He parts the vines that cloak the sundial’s face,
Its gnomon bent, its numbers all erased.
“Here stood the oak,” he murmurs to the air,
“Where laughter swung, suspended by her hair…
Dear Clara.” (Ah, the name, a thorned refrain!)
“We swore this soil would bind us, root and vein.”
The air grows thick with ghosts of peonies,
Their petals long dissolved to symphonies
Of scent that haunt the pathways, phantom-sweet.
A marble bench, where moss and marble meet,
Still bears the scars of childish blades that scored
A pledge: *Two hearts, one garden, evermore.*
He kneels, though bones protest the earth’s cold kiss,
And parts the weeds with fingers thin as mist.
Beneath: a sapling oak, its leaves wan-green,
Its trunk no thicker than a memory’s gleam.
“Our child-tree,” he breathes—tears salt the loam—
“You’ve starved on promises I failed to home.”
The wind keens through the arbors, stripped and stark,
As twilight bleeds its ink across the dark.
Somewhere, a rusted lantern clangs its dirge,
While Silas gropes through yew-hedges’ surge
Toward the heart where roses once held court—
Now one remains, a tremulous report
Of crimson ’gainst the gray. Its stem, inclined
As if to sip the rain of years behind,
Quivers beneath his gaze. “You kept your vow,”
He chokes. “While I… Oh, Clara, tell me how
To mend what seasons shattered. I was weak—
The world outside… its clamor made me meek.”
The rose lets fall a petal. In its descent,
He sees her face—the cheeks June’s sun had spent
In apricot and gold; the eyes that held
The very blueprint of the springtide’s spell.
*“Brother,”* she whispers (was that wind or song?),
*“You lingered too long. Oh, you lingered too long.”*
III
Flash of the past: Two children, palm to palm,
Planting the acorn in the evening’s calm.
Her frock grass-stained, his knees scabbed from the climb
To steal this sprout from Death’s own fiefdom, Time.
“It’ll grow as tall as God!” she’d laughed,
While he, the elder, carved their epitaph
In stone: *Here lie two gardeners of Earth,
Who fought the frost and fed the rose’s birth.*
But fever came—a thief in moonless guise—
And stole her breath, yet left her star-flecked eyes
Open, as if to watch him keep their oath.
He fled. The world became a leviathan’s growth
Of noise and neon, years like locusts swarmed,
Till age returned him, shriveled and unarmed.
Now, trembling, he upturns the withered crate
Where child-Silas hid his wooden spade—
The handle, worm-gnawed; blade, a rusted crescent—
And digs where roots drink tears of long repentance.
IV
Midnight. The garden breathes in silvered hues.
The old man, clay-caked, hears the ancient news
The soil tells—of worms that turn, of roots
That strangle stones in slow, arboreal disputes.
“Clara,” he pleads, “take back the vow I broke.
Let Time reverse its ledger, revoke
This dereliction.” Moonlight, cold and clean,
Anoints the single rose’s fading sheen.
A shudder runs through petals—sudden, bright—
And there, beneath the cataract of light,
A sapling shivers into sudden growth:
Thorns soften; branches, with a groaning sloth,
Burst into bloom—white roses, myriad,
Their fragrance spun from every joy they’d had.
But as he reaches, laughing through cracked lips,
The vision fades—the thorns regain their grips,
The rose shrinks back, a crumpled wisp of red.
“No!” Silas wails. “Take me instead! Instead!”
V
Dawn stains the east with ashes. Frost has claimed
The final rose—its brilliance dimmed, maimed
By crystals hung like swords. The old man lies
Beside the sapling, filmed with rime’s demise.
In his clenched hand: a petal, brittle-dry,
And carved into the bench where twin hearts sigh,
A fresh groove scores the marble, raw and pale:
*One gardener remains—his roots now frail.*
The gate sways wide. Through it, the wind conveys
Two voices woven through the willow’s haze—
A girl’s bright chatter, and an old man’s tone,
Now freed from flesh, at last not quite alone.
The garden sleeps. Some say the roses weep
Where stone and soil their secret vigil keep.
But travelers who dare those gates to tread
Find thorns that part… and one pure rose, blood-red,
Which blooms each dusk, though plucked, though frost conspire—
Its roots fed deep on love’s unquenched fire.
