November Carnage

A rose exploded in the night.
It didn't die of drought or blight.
It detonated. Blew six others out of sight.
Further off, another four
were stripped of all their flesh:
red, white, white-splashed-with-red
and dusky blue, their petals lay
in wavy lines across the bed.

In contrast to their patterned fall
the bomber's body parts were blown
across the garden, side
to side and end to end
in random disarray. When blown apart,
the Rosa Mundi Bonaparte
left fragments everywhere:
on gravel, grass and paving stone,
as if four different winds had blown
together in a storm.

Strange thing: it was a cultured rose,
one steeped in Rosa lore - the very last
rose, you'd have thought
to be a home-grown terrorist.

One consolation we can take:
a quiet time of year,
the season almost done,
the population sparser then
than a few months before.
But had the bomber struck back then,
how changed the outcome could have been!