Memorabilia
by John Bartlett
My father comes to me from a garden overgrown with roses
He called his roses 'circus roses'; but I never heard anyone else call them that.
Colours were like a circus, red, yellow, like a tumbling clown,
made you catch your breath like a high-wire flight.
Worth remembering colours like these.
Memories blow away like ash, as we struggle to remember,
we become dust ourselves.
Why should anyone still remember when we have stopped our own remembering?
Long after I'm gone, the ragged Wisteria will still thrust itself rudely through a broken fence,
demanding to be seen.
Things worth remembering are too ephemeral to survive
Things worth remembering will not survive.
Even my remembering will not be remembered.
This poem is a public submission created for Red Room Poetry's New Shoots digital poetry anthology.