A CLUSTER OF ROSES

RAYMOND DREW

Flowers open their deep rose lips, yawn on the kitchen table.

I'm reminded of Rose.

From the beach Rose saw the house in white, fluttering through the trees. The path led down from an ancient gate. Grass grew up through the sand, and overhead, the trees dripped their leaves. We lay there in the sun. Across the bay, the sand banks silvered, wet as glass. The water spooled on to the beach. The dressing sheds curved round the shore like a rainbow. That all happened a long time ago.

An artist dreamt of Rosie, a long time gone: Once she took an apple. I drew it here, above her ice cream breasts. She bit into the red and snaffled a bite. Rosie had the skin of milk and peaches and auburn hair, wealthier where the sun shone through, and when the breeze floated those strands rose in the golden air. She lay there in the scent of sea grass, burning marijuana in my loft above the street where people down below made their way to market. The studio, all in white. The bentwood chairs. Red. Yellow. Sapphire. The red stairs, and that strange metallic taste in the mouth, long gone. I drew a long curve up her thighs, long and slow, smoothly as she goes, until I came to the twin Cees of her breasts. I tipped them Rose Madder.

I'm writing roses.

A legend says a loving smile gave birth to a rose. Another tells how, pining for Flora, Zephyrus became a rose. I ask myself, I ask you: what is the essence of a rose?

Rose is the mystery of birth and rose is the darkness of the end.

Rose Martin's child arrived in a tent in the bush. At dawn, before the sun began to rise, in the grey pre-dawn silence, she woke, felt something stir. He lit the camp fire, boiled the water. Rose marched around the camp, steaming. 'It's coming,' she said. She smashed her fist against a tree and then lay down inside the tent to heave and heave, and the baby came then, rose magenta. Her husband wrapped the boy, placed it on her heart, and as he tied and cut the cord, the cockatoos came down and swooped the tent, chiacking. And the dogs barked, ran round in circles, too, the family all alone among the high trees in the mountains. And then the sun rose.

Rose, messenger of love.

Love first rose when they messed around in a car by the sea, fish and hot fags of chips jammed in the glove box, the windows misted in love. 'I don't believe in doing it in cars,' she said, and he moved closer, murmuring, 'But I love you - I think'. Her eyes pooled before him, melted under a wash of distant yellow light, modest, maybe disbelieving. She waited. Her soft white strap slipped down. Her breast curved. 'Oh, Jack,' she said. Her cheeks glowed peach and pink above the dash-board radio. 'No,' she urged, 'No, Jack. Let's wait. Not now. Let's make it something special'.

When the foam of the sea gave rise to Venus, the loam of the earth gave birth to the rose. Or so the legend goes.

Ripe she was, his country Rose, a month after the born baby. 'You are so beautiful,' he sang, and she went off into the trees, laughing. She unhitched her donkey, rode through the deepening bush, climbed a hill, and nursing her baby, watched the sun set over the mountains. And with the darkness came the silence.

When rose is red, rose is the colour of life.

No more than a youth, Jack toted his books from the car in through the front door and up the unsteady steps of the house by the sea and into the brand new room and their brand new life together. When Rose saw him, she laughed, she said, 'Oh Jack, what a heavy head you must have!'

He closed the door and they were together, alone in the silence, apart from the sound of the distant sea surge. With a bouquet of flowers he knelt down before her. And he said:

'I Love You,' in purple and in red.

In flushed embarrassment he knelt before the Queen on her diamante throne. Then thousands more joined him, knelt before Her, crying, 'O Hail, Queen of the Night, Queen of the Stars and the Moon, O Hail!'

She placed her gold rimmed spectacles on the table. At two in the morning she kissed him gently, her long blonde hair crinkling, her eyes as blue as china. They kissed and kissed at first, and then in her stutteringly quick intellectual voice, she told him of sad songs and her solitary madness.

The same moonlight that frosted the window glass sliced through the venetian blinds, came to rest on the blue pastel wall above the bed. She undressed quickly, lay back like a martyr. Her arms embraced him like a smile after he stumbled in beside her, his back against the wall. They made love. Made love, and then she fell asleep. She slept on through the night. He raised the covers, and in wonder, traced the curves of her pale body.

In the morning he stepped out into the dawn, a man. He climbed into his car, turned left down Marine Parade. With nowhere to go but here he squeezed his foot down on the accelerator and the car surged out past the empty beach suburbs, on down the highway. At each intersection the traffic lights were green, already green. The sun rose. The bayside houses glowed the colour of beaches and sand as he drove on, deeply breathing the fresh air he let stream through all the open windows.

Roses grow well in heavy loam or friable clay. They're better pruned in winter.

When winter came, Country Rose warmed herself by the camp fire. A wild boar, huge, tusked, a cauldron on legs, lumbered past the fire, nodded casually, gave a grunt. They both exchanged respects.

Then the birds warned her. Hunters were coming.

III

I send you a cluster of roses.

I give you this sad old Rose: an old man dreamt of his Rose, half lost behind the yolloping years. An old man at the Terminus, he watched the young girls alight from the buses. He washed his false teeth with a can of beer. He mooned to himself, There are girls still wanton in this world of mine with eyes still almond bright, with lips to kiss... We lay there in the ripe wheat fields, Rose and I. The seamless sky was blue from ear to ear... Whatever comes to pass down here is nonsense in Eternity...

A childish rose: at nine, and Carmen reborn, her tight little arse hugging skirt wiggled as she walked. Along the street, she sent the invitation of the eyes to all the boys, made sure they watched her every move.

A boy rose, at thirteen, walked across the sitting room, after a long silence, to lift a telephone, to wait, to finally say: Are you doing anything on Saturday, Felicity?

In his room a young male rose to dream, hand on his heart, Although I've never met you, Virginia, I'm sure you'll have ringlets of long black hair, oh, yes, I'll like you, with your dark soft eyes and perfect lips like crushed roses, and you'll wear a pout, all innocence, and a dress embroidered with dark roses, sexual...

Sexual. When buxom Rose drove the car to the top of the hill - a cigarette lit, a kiss in the dark - her breasts rose under his hand, her face softened. She said (a smile in the warm darkness), 'Is this your first time?' He blushed.

Take one impulsive Rose: far and away in another town, she melted under the dark bed covers, to say, Eve to his Adam, I love you forever, for ever. A year later she left him forever, for ever.

A Rose of Sharon, like Steinbeck's Rose - blonde and full breasted, her door was always open. In an empty sun-striped room she danced to country rock, jumping, weaving, fluid as molten gold. Generous Rose.

Those roses on the wall, those painted roses, are not in fashion now. 'At one time,' she said, 'when Gustav Klimt was popular, women in green glittering eyes seduced men, held them in clusters of gold and roses. But now such eyes - the Gaze, you know - are indiscreet, politically unsound. Good gracious. Women are meant to be heard, not seen!' She walked on through the spacious gallery.

I give you a broken Rose: she wore a whimsical smile and she answered your questions with a half hidden weariness, a silent sigh. Otherworldly Susan. Her white stained face breathed - ennui. She turned to cross the floor - of her room - reminiscent of a museum. She poised her white chinese crockery on the antique mahogany table - precariously placing the pieces in such order, such order, they threatened to fall - were the place mats slightly moved - into absolute chaos.

The full moon shone along a pathway near the beach. Beer cans, a breeze at their backs, shuttled down the gutters. Litter decorated the ti trees, nestled in sand drifts under the esplanade, rustled the path. Discarded lolly wrappers flittered in the bins. A late night tram yanked its way down Fitzroy Street, St Kilda.

The sea echoed under the pier through the dark smell of mussels.

He climbed the sea wall and leapt onto the sand to find the whole bay sparkling, the beach ghost white under the moon. Rose followed, ran toward the sea and chucked off her shoes. She dabbled her feet at the waterside and then she waded in. She moved into the black liquid as moonlight scribbled across the soft, dimpled surface. The water lapped over her belly. She seemed to be staring out into the darkness past the long pier. 'Can you hear that sound?' she said.

Wavelets washed the beach. The water churned and bubbled, sieved back into the sea. In the distance, the traffic droned about St Kilda Junction. And the late night tram clanked down Fitzroy Street.

'Sound?' he said.

'No, not there! Out there, to sea!' Rose pointed into the distance.

'I can't hear a thing out there.'

'The beat. There's a beat there, under the wind.'

'I can't hear any beat.'

'The beat beneath it all.'

She dived into the soft sea, broke surface and wigwagged her head, tossing a shower of water diamonds into the night.

Then a crow flew out of the darkness. It circled her once at the fulcrum of the world, circled. It gave a long slow call which seemed to come out of the heart. It called to Rose, and then it flew away.

'There's an omen,' she said, from the centre of the world. 'Confirmation. If we stay with the heart, nothing has to be done. 'Cept be.'

They walked along the shore.

When he looked up he grew dizzy. The violet sky, embracing an ocean of stars, yawned and fell back into the black sea. He was going south east, not only because his home lay in that direction; the breeze seemed to be urging him along that course as well.

When he woke in the morning the sun shone through the casement window. He looked out over the sea. Light motes shot like streamers through the blue sky.

That morning, Rose glowed, the sunlight cresting the stained glass windows, the absurd radio chinking the air, the fire still warm in the hearth. Outside the unkempt garden flowered around the rusting fence.

In the late afternoon, Rose, paint can in hand, painted I LOVE YOU in pink over the walls of the house, across the open door, the iron letterbox. He spent the day afraid the landlord, afraid the neighbours, might see. He spent the day scrubbing the words away.

The beauty of those days lay not in the vision and the visionaries, nor even in the mind blown free, but in the love. There still is a presence and a warm furriness. That ancient warm furriness is what we miss, when all is said and done.

Nature is rose. Nakedness rose. Sincerity rose. Innocence rose. Children are rose. Rose of flowers, rose of living things. Rose of breasts and nipples, rose of the heart, rose the phallus, rose the bloom of cheeks, rose the new born child.

Remember lost roses: Clifton Pugh, walking along the pathway to his house, says, 'You against the War?' shows me his bush place, the shy and silent animals, his love paintings. Elsewhere, John Perceval paints Canberra in the snow, unaware of coming winter. A rogue rose, and full of cheek, he writes a cheque for one million dollars, his losses in a card game. Grey Smith takes it to the bank, and demanding payment, leaps over the counter. Thorny rose.

A girl cries in Iraq, a dark, broken rose after the Americans bomb.

Before He rose, He descended into hell.

Susan rose, at twenty three, downed her medication, died alone in the dark. She died of a broken heart.

Darkness rose. After the separation, Carl found the loneliness, the shame, unbearable. One night he rose, took a gun, drove to the house where she answered the door. After he ended her life and another and another, he came home to kill himself in their pink, floral bedroom.

Guilt driven Rose: Someone rang at the door, one night, late. They rang. He stepped down the stairs to the door. He could not see through the frosted glass to the other side. He opened the door to a girl dressed in black. With a white face and a necklace of red. She'd cut her throat deeply. She murmured, Help me, fell in through the door, fainted. He stemmed the flow as best he could. Before the ambulance came, she murmured, 'Do you think I'm evil?'

VII

On the third day, Jesus rose.

Orban, artist at ninety four, full of wonder, smiled. 'Art is something new, something you've never seen before.'

In America, Kerouac rose, wrote of eternity. It seemed like everlasting safety, refreshing afternoon, roses, he said. O thank you. And Miller's Rosy Crucifixion. A rosebud dropped at Kane's last breath. Yes, in Ireland Molly Bloom'd, while Lawrence, banned, dark, English rose, prophetic, rose, instinctive rose.

In Australia, too, they rose: Lawson on the night train saw a glimpse of mystic sky. Dransfield rose, dreamt of satori, condemned the nightmare. Winton wrote of Rose in love.

In this house a child opened a card, wrote I Love You Timy and coloured in a heart. It's a fine day with little chance of rain. Susan Gray arose to write, one night, 'It's... something... something from the heart'. With little chance of rain.

Rose is deep in nature. The Buddha said, Wisdom and Compassion are the root of the teaching. The rose head stems from a cluster of thorns. The rose of compassion, our passion, our pity. The rose of passion, the rose of sex.

The sun rises, sexual. The flowers bloom, sexual, the sperm ignites the ovary, sexual. The moon completes each phase and glides the night sky sexual you write your poetry and sing your songs sexual you stand before the mirror adding mascara to your eyes before the party sexual the grass grows on Rocky Knoll each season it dies, sexual, and we are born sexual, mature sexual, die sexual. Her T-shirt reads Nirvana, sexual, she keeps her lover's photograph in her handbag, sexual, the secret of the rosy cross, sexual, the children lie between the breasts of dunes, sexual. Into the great womb we go, into the matrix of darkness, where nobody knows, sexual. Show me your great paintings, sonatas and symphonies, the great books of fiction, show me your art, in shape, in form, design, sexual.

VIII

These nights, down the Parade, the late night traffic howls through the navy dark. The street lights overhang to spit out sick yellow light.

Sailors piss from tenement windows.

And the world has turned.

In this place, in this very room, a young man, Furry, sucked a joint, held it, red faced, exhaled explosively, said, as cool as possible, 'Now Sharon's gone... I think I'm going, too'. Rose held him, and he went on to say the times had changed and he'd tried to keep the faith but the world had soured, the heart no longer mattered. 'I need something,' he'd said, 'to keep away the pain'.

I'm writing all this down. I'm writing through the storm. My wife sleeps on in the room down the hall. The children dream. Out to sea the crests of the waves are torn off by the wind. If you listen closely you can hear the Sirens cry, way out to sea. And Susan Morgan's dead. Young blue eyed Rose, she's gone. And Furry too.

I spoke to Rosie O'Connor on the telephone the other day. She said, 'Remember the days I modelled for you, the season of the seventies? I still try to live that way'. I lay awake and dreamed. What was, what might have been.

Rose.

The rain showers on the casement windows and the water sluices the darkened glass. Now the wind slows and the rain falls softly.

Someone's tapping on the glass.

Behind the streaming water I see a flash of rose. Outside an early blossom flutters. A branch, a cherry tree, bobbles, taps against the window.

I'm looking up.

'Jack.'

You're standing at the doorway, smiling. You're saying, 'Look, see the blossoms? How strange to see them bloom in winter! Look. Listen. If you stay with the heart, there's nothing to do, 'cept be. There's confirmation, something good, an omen!'

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