Blue Roses: A Halloween Poem

The BBC reports on a genetic breakthrough, of sorts. Japanese whisky distiller Suntory, along with Australian biotech firm Florigene, have succeeded (you can be the judge as to how well) in developing a blue rose. Blue roses, it appears, have been long sought, and are nearly mythological in status--a symbol of mystery, of impossible things, of hope against unattainable love.

Or not.

Horticultural purists find the genetic manipulation to be ... cheating, I suppose. As for me, I choose my roses by smell, not by color. I am far more interested in the possibility of trying 12 or 18 year aged Japanese single malt whisky. I guess maybe their gambit is paying off.

In honor of the blue rose, and because we are getting close to Halloween:

Blue Roses: A Halloween Poem

My love has roses in her cheeks—
This always has been true.
Last week, she tumbled down the stairs;
Those roses now are blue.

Her ivory teeth, her ruby lips,
Her blush of rosy red;
Each aspect’s hue now changed, because
She landed on her head.

I loved to lay my head upon
The pillow of her breast;
A cooler pillow now that she’s
Eternally at rest.

Geneticists have conjured up
The first true-blue blue rose
I’ll have to buy one for my love,
To sweeten her repose.

Blue roses at her bedside, and
Blue roses in her cheeks;
Eternal love, transcending death
The message it bespeaks

Beside her grave, I planted
Roses red, for love so true;
But every spring, the roses bloom
A deathly shade of blue.

Is this her way of telling me
She knows how much I loved her?
Or else, perhaps, a message that
She’s angry that I shoved her.