Rose Moon Elegy

The moon, full on the ceremony of your passing.

And you, amateur stargazer and certified chemist,

master gardener in your own backyard,

purveyor of that rich and regal scent,

who relished the thorns as much as the plush

of a perfectly ripened bloom—I can see

your lips now, curving into a smile

beneath your mustache’s twin scimitars,

unchanged since Calloway flailed the beat

and Eckstine’s honeyed timbres massaged

the airwaves.

Well, here we are, still humming and thumping,

while the world pummels itself into a stupor,

hate and ignorance canceling every holy discipline

you worked a lifetime for—percolating beakers,

test tubes siphoning their slithery emulsions,

all those magic gelatins and peppery dust.

I pray you weren’t alive enough to grasp it.

I don’t believe in prayer but pray this

nonetheless.

So, Sir Astronomer, King of the Roses:

This moon’s for you. Added to the irony

is this penumbral eclipse, a consequence

of imperfect alignment: When her silvered

face darkens, bite for bite in our shadow,

you’ll still be as gone as gone can get.

So much for science. “That’s all she wrote,”

you’d say, slapping the book shut.