Ere the first sad petal falls

It always was this way. My age perhaps,
my inner age, the age I've always been,
that I see beauties in a flower long past it's best --
not there when it was in its prime.

The rose that blooms a step too far,
gets over big, too heavy for its stem,
its face too blown. Perhaps
too sated for the bees that visit it,

but in whatever cause, it oversteps the mark,
cannot contain its shape or hue.
If only nature had a reset button for the flower --
as that hid wrapped inside the human brain.

I understand the present beauty of the flower.
Inclusive loveliness.
A montage of the graces that have flown.
To me it says: Perfection never was.

Decay rips silently inside the ache for more.
The artist knows not when to stop.
There is no point at which two visions meet:
This vision of the future on a view of now.

What once seemed consummation of
our hopes, the rose's full potential, its
maturity, was but the master's small 
maquette for what was still to come.

Back then I gave it all my admiration,
but now it has me locked in its embrace,
defenseless in the face of these new charms
and ravished into ecstasy.