Still Life with Rose

Like a foreskin being pulled back, the damask 
reveals – pelvic bowl of pink-fringed shadow, 
dense sweet-meat bloom, coral’d cave, puce 
empyrean with no vanishing point, planetary blush! 
So let me in – where everything is new-born 
and crystalline, paused and protected – into that other 
world, that high-shine place of safety, arranged 
and sparking up like a bower. Almost every day, 
for some moments, I think about him – the black 
stems, thorns that can prick so deeply, whorl 
of serrated leaves, all just beneath, around – still 
gorgeousness – your petal’d cumulus, your constancy – 
helps me live. O rose keep on stunning for me – 
for all us boys who have been ruined by men.