01 climbing rose

november 2001

130mm x 174mm, 4 pages, unique copy

The climbing rose, a Dorothy Perkins, had been on the side of the shed for decades and was a great favourite with my mother. She received the news that I had cut it hard back while she was in hospital with great suspicion, certain that I had ruined it. She died before it flowered that year, as abundantly as ever, the new growth and tangle of interwoven stems a parallel to the cancer that had spread and bloomed through her leg.

The climbing rose flowered on June the eighteenth.

I cut it hard back while you were away

cut out its tangle and trailing stems;

on returning you had eyed the work cautiously

but the rose began to bud and thicken

and now, as every year, its flowers

pink and profuse, cluster the shed.