Drawing by Susan C. Price
Rose
By Eric Meub
Rose
By Eric Meub
[Originally published on May 10, 2014]
Today I found the body of the deer
who used to eat my garden rose by rose.
I recognized her by the ragged ear
she flared once when I sprayed her with the hose.
Today I came across the bones again,
the curving ribs arranged in two white rows
about a wilting bush. I noticed then
the bud these ribs so carefully enclose.
Today, to fit in my familiar drill
before a business trip, I somehow rose
at five to carry water up the hill.
You’ll call it an obsession, I suppose.
On coming home I found my garden piled
with leaves: how had I let it grow this wild?
| Copyright © 2014, 2015, 2020 by Susan C. Price & Eric Meub Eric Meub, architect, lives and practices in Pasadena, the adopted brother of the artist, Susan C. Price. They respect, in their different ways, the line. |
Six of fourteen lines end with “–ose,” but end so naturally we are hardly aware of it, their rhyming doing its work on us under the transom of out consciousness. High art, high artists!
ReplyDeleteI was touched by this poem, Eric. It remained me of a deer I got to know in Washington, State. In 1969 I went to work making bombs for the Navy at the Bangor Depot. https://www.historylink.org/File/20540. The lunch room was on the hill from the bunker we worked in and walking back and forth a 8 point buck started following us. The next day and each day from then on we would bring something for the buck to eat. This went on for over a year, then they opened the depot up to bow hunting and the first deer killed was our buck. It probably walked right up to it's killer. We all blamed ourselves for the deer's death. I still do.
ReplyDeleteEd, I hope that everyone who follows Moristotle & Co. at all will see and read your comment. I feel your pain. I recognize my own in it.
DeleteNice sonnet.
ReplyDeleteIt's always nice to read a poem where the rhyme is not forced. Read it more than one and each time it gets better.
Eric's poetry always surprises me in just the way Micheal describes, it falls together so naturally you almost don't notice it. So many rhymes seem contrived, but not our Eric. And how they mesh the poetry with the drawings has a magic all its own!
ReplyDeleteWonderful work, Eric. Thank you.
ReplyDelete