Kissing Roses

I do love smooching flowers. Sometimes I give them a small pat because they are kind of irresistible. Like babies who all smell very good most of the time...

 
                     Kissing Roses

              When I smell a flower
             I offer it a kiss in return.
              While this may not be
                   a fair trade, it is
             the best I have to offer.

               Sometimes they put
                    a thorn my way
           as a warning to be gentle
                as I pull them to me.
               Sometimes the most
              perfectly shaped ones
               have very little smell
             but I smooch them still.

        Others, unassuming in color,
              a bit ragged in shape,
               have a perfume that
             leaves me weak kneed
                   and staggering,
    barely able to stand long enough
           to deliver my adoring kiss.

                  We are all roses
                       are we not,
                   our lives begun
            as the sweetest cherubs
         like tiny unfolding rosebuds.
       Perhaps our soil was the best
               and sweet rain came
                on time, every time,
                 stopped only by a
              loving sun well before
      our drainage was overwhelmed.

     Some roses were poorly potted,
        or their planting amounted to
       a stab in barely fertile ground
      watered only when convenient,
     never pruned, yet they persisted.
             And so it is that a weed,
                by any other name,
               is always unwanted,
                       rose or not.