Robert Creeley

Dried Roses

"Dried roses..." Were these from some walk
All those years ago? Were you the one
Was with me? Did we talk?
Who else had come along?

Memory can stand upright
Like an ordered row of stiff stems,
Dead echo of flowering heads,
Roses once white, pink and red.

Back of them the blackness,
Backdrop for all our lives,
The wonders we thought to remember
Still life, still life.