BURNING HOUSE PRESS

No Bed of Roses

To distract us from horrible numbers
I wear this hat. It’s wide as a plate, full of roses and birds,
a platter in red and white, and thin as a peel of sunburned skin.
You can see right through it. The birds fly around it
and nest and do all the bird things. You can watch
my hat instead of the news of the horrible numbers
who populate all of our nightmares
disturbing our rest, I say rest because who
still sleeps? after all that has happened.
The birds, though, they sleep. They sleep
among the roses encircling my large plate of a hat,
the hat thin as reason, thin as a thought of compromise,
and wide as all one person can do to avoid
knowing certain things. Wide as a sea of forgetting
the horrible numbers, wide as loss, as much loss
as one small person can carry upon a hat,
even a hat as wide as mine. Ah, the roses.
They have such a lovely scent, it keeps me
awake at night. Let them, I say. Let them.