Ashes of Roses

She wanted Ashes of Roses

for our bedroom walls

but I thought that was like

Dentyne chewing gum.

No, she said, Ashes of Roses.

I thought it was good-bye,

not roses but the dusty

residue of incinerated roses.

How about Barbizon I said.

How about a tall, yellow

butterscotch coop

at the Balmoral Hotel

in Edinburgh? Now

that’s something you could

dive into and come up

with a mouthful of feathers

all aflutter. No, she said, Ashes

of Roses, you know

the clinking of a tea set

on a Mexican veranda?

I thought, more like a

window in a pink stucco house,

several ventriloquists’ dummies

sitting in a pile on the sill,

some with smiling faces

pressed against the glass.

No, silly, more like a piano

with the hammers wrapped

up in chamois napkins

so they barely make a sound.

You mean, like when the gamekeepers

make their rounds in the park

at three in the morning

with silencers on their sidearms

and the high fog over the city

has that sickly pink glow?

Ashes of Roses, Ashes of Roses,

not Mysteria, Hawksbill, Sachet

or Monet Lilac. I thought of the way

I could still see her against

my eyelids when I closed

my eyes. I found myself

in a garden of pewter roses,

I thought of all fall down,

I thought of roses made

of silvery ashes, roses

so beautiful that I was afraid

to even consider breathing.