The Boyhood Botanist

Here's one I evidently wrote about six years ago just before Jessica's birthday. It's funny, but I don't remember this poem, though I often refer to her as my "red rose". It's a bit odd, but I do have a degree in landscape contracting.
A lad was he, still young and fresh,
A yet trickle of a stream;
When thoughts of gardens, lush and green,
Prevailed in evening's dream.
His life's reality not yet
A bud, no, not yet seen.
For what should flower in his life
As he became a man,
But that his dream should come to pass:
Horticulture was his plan.

Yet long before the whisperings
Of botany were heard,
That lad beheld a fantasy
Ne'er uttered by a word.
His feet this path would someday take
To enchanted evening.
For as he grew, this dream became
An integrated part
Of that lad's yearning, love and passion,
The burning in his heart.

For as a child, he'd looked into
The flowers throughout the land,
But nothing ever could compare
To that one he held so grand.
His eyes beheld the beauty of
This jewel beset in green.
For he had seen at morning's dawn,
Asleep in her repose,
His favorite of all the blooms,
The glorious, red rose.
As all too often is the case
In lives of men and boys,
This dream was shelved in memory,
Replaced by games and toys.
His life, however, would return
To what he'd formerly seen.
As childhood faded to the past,
As schooldays came and went,
The mystery of what would be
His life as it was spent.

All but forgotten was his dream,
Though a gardener was he,
Until, as he was planting seeds,
He saw his memory.
His eyes recalled so instantly
That jewel beset in green.
Then finally, he reached into
The closet of his mind,
And set his grasp so firmly on
This rose, one of a kind.

Setting aside all that he'd held
So tightly in his hand,
He singularly set his sight
On that rose, he thought so grand.
His thoughts drew back to innocence
Of childhood, pure and clean.
For he'd now seen the light of life,
As a candle in darkness glows:
His childhood dream, his fantasy,
His glorious, red rose.