Roses

This is the moment the roses
cascade over backstreet walls,
throng the public parks —
their cream or scrunched pinks

unfolding now to demonstrate
unacknowledged thought.
The world is ours too! they brave,
careless of tomorrow

and wholly without leadership
for who’d mount a soapbox
on the rose-behalf?

I haggle for my little
portion of happiness,

says each flower, equal, in the scented mass.

Kathleen Jamie a poet and a writer of non-fiction. Her reviews and occasional writings have appeared in such journals as The Guardian, the London Review of Books and Orion. Jamie has also written for BBC Radio 3 and 4. Her poems have appeared on the Underground systems of London, New York and Shanghai, and one of her poems was recently chosen by the public to be carved on a huge wooden beam on the national monument at Bannockburn.