RESURRECTION:  ROSE OF JERICHO

(Selaginella lepidophylla)

Daily dream

End of pandemic

Changes?

Developmental stages

Of humans

Dictate reactions:

Children will be children

Just a blip

Extended school vacations

Now over

Life

Like a salty wave on sand

Continues obeying the

Moon’s command

And life

Returns to normal

Teens always immortal

Meeting and greeting

Strength pumping

No fear from a

Casual cough

A sneeze

It is once again

Friendship

As hormones float on the breeze

Young adults

See cracks in the

Mirror of Immortality

But nothing serious

As careers and caresses

Determine the future

Of long life ahead

And now the mid-forty-somethings

Begin to sense

The beginnings of pain

Bones creaking in bed

Hearing whispered warnings

In their head

Post-pandemic protocol

Lingers longer in daily lives

But still

The watchword

It can’t happen to me

…can it?

And what of the elderly?

Dreaming day as well as night

Drifting under a

Black starless sky

Wedge of white moon

Gleaming on a trellis

Of ruby-red roses

Thorns

The elderly see the thorns

The elderly feel the thorns

As we rock out to our

Beloved music

Dressed in jeans

Dressed in Goth black

Carefully avoiding mirrors

In bright rooms

The pandemic never left

We live in fear of death

Death by disease

Or whatever the reaper may please

So I lovingly place

A tumbleweed of

Rose of Jericho

In spiritual water

And as the seemingly-dead roots

Begin to turn green

I can say I have touched and seen

Resurrection…

© 2020 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE:  Before & After Rose of Jericho

               (Heirloom Reviews)