This poem may be a little deep for some people’s taste but I was going for that affect to promote pause and thought about our hurried lives.  That if we step on a rose instead of stopping to smell it and appreciate it, the scent may be on our shoe and follow us but we also have destroyed something beautiful and our life becomes one just to survive instead of to thrive.  I hope I succeeded in conveying that message in the following words:

If a sole steps on a rose
The scent is carried forth
The rose no more
In radiance grows
Nor except for fragrance’s worth

Yet on that sole
And to the soul
Of the one who took
Its life
Is carried forth the fragrance of
The essence of its birth

Do each of we
In struggled hurry
Realize the rose we soled
Its fragrance rising up to bless
Yet its very life we stole.

There is life that survives
There is life that thrives
Which one will be worth the living?
The one that stops to smell the rose
And let it keep on giving

Too hurried we
Too oft we leave
The fragrance on our sole
When much to give if the rose did live
To nurture our very soul

Stop and smell the roses
Walk among the bees
There is much to learn and much to give
If we strive to thrive and let to live

Valerie Kingsbury

July 15, 2012
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