Via Ed Yong on twitter, the blue roses I wrote about 2 years ago are soon to be available in the US. As Ed notes… no, they don’t look blue. But they do give me a chance to post one of my favorites–and you can try to remember where you saw it, when Halloween rolls around. After the jump:

The BBC reports on a genetic breakthrough, of sorts. Japanese whisky distiller Suntory, along with Australian biotech firm Florigene, have succeeded (you can be the judge as to how well) in developing a blue rose. Blue roses, it appears, have been long sought, and are nearly mythological in status–a symbol of mystery, of impossible things, of hope against unattainable love.

Or not.

Horticultural purists find the genetic manipulation to be … cheating, I suppose. As for me, I choose my roses by smell, not by color. I am far more interested in the possibility of trying 12 or 18 year aged Japanese single malt whisky. I guess maybe their gambit is paying off.

In honor of the blue rose, and because we are getting close to Halloween:

Blue Roses: A Halloween Poem

My love has roses in her cheeks—
This always has been true.
Last week, she tumbled down the stairs;
Those roses now are blue.

Her ivory teeth, her ruby lips,
Her blush of rosy red;
Each aspect’s hue now changed, because
She landed on her head.

I loved to lay my head upon
The pillow of her breast;
A cooler pillow now that she’s
Eternally at rest.

Geneticists have conjured up
The first true-blue blue rose
I’ll have to buy one for my love,
To sweeten her repose.

Blue roses at her bedside, and
Blue roses in her cheeks;
Eternal love, transcending death
The message it bespeaks

Beside her grave, I planted
Roses red, for love so true;
But every spring, the roses bloom
A deathly shade of blue.

Is this her way of telling me
She knows how much I loved her?
Or else, perhaps, a message that
She’s angry that I shoved her.