Monday, August 04, 2025

Rosa 'Dainty Bess' 4 August 2025

 

 

We talked as Girls do – (392) – Emily Dickinson

We talked as Girls do –

Fond, and late –

We speculated fair, on every subject, but the Grave –

Of our’s, none affair –

 

We handled Destinies, as cool –

As we – Disposers – be –

And God, a Quiet Party

to our authority –

 

But fondest, dwelt opon Ourself

As we eventual – be –

When Girls, to Women, softly raised

We – occupy – Degree –

 

We parted with a contract

To cherish, and to write

But Heaven made both, impossible

Before another night.

 

In that past century were I am from we often talked about feminine women and of the concept of femininity. In this century it is virtually verboten to discuss the subject.

My Rosemary was graceful, dainty, beautiful, lovely and tiny. These were adjectives I often used in describing feminine women. When I had the opportunity and pleasure to photograph Audrey Hepburn (to me a paragon of femininity) I was struck by how tall she was. I asked her if she had ever been in a film with a shorter actor. Her answer was, “Yes with Humphrey Bogart”.

Another factor that I included in my definition of femininity was that for me the woman had to be blonde. Why is this? When in 1958 I saw the film Raintree County at the Varsity Theatre on Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas with my mother my eyes were all on Eva Marie Saint and I mostly ignored Elizabeth Taylor.

And so it was, sometime around 15 December 1967, when I was walking out of a school I was teaching in Mexico City, I spotted (from the back) on the street a woman with straight blonde hair, a miniskirt and lovely legs, Rosemary became my wife a month and a half later.

Every day, it is obvious to me I must somehow transfer my melancholy and longing for my now gone wife, into a blog. Her roses, our roses give me a good excuse to scan them and associate them with her.

She loved this rose, Rosa ‘Dainty Bess’ which is not a showy multi-petalled old or English Rose. It is a single rose, barely pink. Its prominent red stamens are lovely if you get close to look at the bloom.One of its claims to fame are its prominent 

More Emily Dickinson

I stepped from plank to plank 

When everything that  ticked has stopped 

 Doubly Grateful

A Slash of Blue

For I - inhabit Her

In Ceaseless Rosemary

The Morns are meeker

A Favourite Just Noticed 

All the Witchcraft that we need 

It only gives our wish for blue 

My heart is laden 

Of bronze and blaze

The red and the white 

A Lady Red

Hands 

I took my power in my hands 

That clarifies the sight 

 Nature rarer uses yellow

Rosemary white and a bit of yellow 

Nature rarer uses yellow

Luck is not chance 

T is iris sir 

The white heat

I tried to be a rose 

nature rarer uses yellow 

The Tulip

Nor would I be a poet 

November left then clambered up
You cannot make remembrance grow
November
the maple wears a gayer scarf 

 A melancholy of a waning summer
Just as green and as white
It's full as opera
I cannot dance upon my Toes
a door just opened on the street 
Amber slips away
Sleep
When August burning low
Pink Small and punctual
A slash of blue
I cannot dance upon my toes
Ah little rose
For hold them, blue to blue