Return To Eden - A Sestina

Only the empty waste to watch your wheels turn
and the hot black road shining in the sun.
Back home you'd be watering that old rose
bush until the can had given all its blood to the earth.
Here though, is a desert made of ash and dust
and ancient things found only in a story.

I weep to think I'll never hear your story
again rest upon your lips. All thanks to the endless turn
of the world, a truth that makes my castle fall to dust.
How long did you rest there in that setting sun?
As your water, like that can's, soaked into the earth
and gave life to a different flower, just as red as your old rose.

I promise you, I'll never look at a rose
the same way. And I'll use my words to share your story
with this garden long after you've returned to the earth.
This hollowed tree is the only reminder of your life's turn.
They don't care a bit about a burning October sun
or about shelves now lined with only dust.

They say we'll all one day become that dust
and rest upon shelves to become a rose
in our own vase. I'd rather rest under the sun
but happy endings are only found in a bedtime story.
What will I do when at last it becomes my turn
to return all I am to this earth?

I always fear the dangers of this cruel earth,
so afraid that even my dreams are filled with dust.
This blood ash has taken my life in turn.
I live only for that poor old rose,
to care for the only ending to your story
I think about, now wilting under the dying sun.

Can we dare to dream of oranges eaten under a younger sun,
almost the same, save for its time upon this earth?
Does the telling of a tragic story
to many times transform the words to dust?
To crumble away like that old rose
when it too has lives out its life turn.

Can not the dust smother that October sun?
Or else turn its amber light to rose
much like the story you wrote upon this earth.