Marigold's Obituary

 
 
I awoke to the sunlight
And to the left of my head  
There came into gaze:
Cripes! Small bodies, little corpses,  
Sprinkled, the dirt crumblies,  
Lay in pieces all over my headspace,
And I look on in confusion and  
It was like in the horror films,  
Where you awake to a pool of blood
But I had not yet identified the victim.
And I notice the puffed body of the magnesium pill
I had given to my beloved marigold (my canned window plant)
And I gasp! Marigold! No, it can't be---
It can be. It was.  
Marigold lay in pieces in the area past my bed and in the cranny of the side of my desk.  
I peered down to the depths  
Like it was the pits of Tartarus;
And there in the dark morning shadow
Was the remains of Marigold, sweet Marigold,  
Knocked from her setting place of the top of the desk,  
And into the pits of hell
And her remains all over
And her blossoms and blooms, still fresh
And the leaves still full and plump,  
Plucked from life so fast--
And I knew I had to preserve her, and quickly
For I would have probably lost my mind if
I had to watch her decay,  
Or to toss her all out to the garden to the frost.  
No, I had to wrap her, mummify her, mold her to flat:
And so I set about  
And fetched my pressing book, my scissors, and I cut away her deadened stems
And took away the dried-on flowers, memories of previous selves,  
And put them in different piles.  
And I carefully took the sweet, full, rich scented blooms
And I took her faces, orange and deep scarlet,  
So many eyes and ears,  
So many present selves that  
She wore so well in the light,  
And I take them all and press them into the notebook paper
And flatten her being, preserving her best parts, freezing her,  
Capturing her essence,
And the dried blossoms,  
I will probably do something with them later (jewelry maybe)
And it is interesting to have a living creature
That wore her dead flowers and her deadened stems  
And indeed some of the stalks had begun to wilt,  
And to have it all composite in one creature,  
Where instead of a coat of many colors,  
It was a heart full of faces,  
Like a ten-headed pocket watch,  
And earlier in the month,  
I had wondered how and when she would die  
As Marigold was an annual
And had been alive for 8 months now,  
And it is cold now, and  
Though she is indoors,  
She was not immortal.  
Perhaps she heard me,  
Or maybe something else entirely heard me,
And decided to show me exactly how an annual  
Dies in unusual circumstance.
And so she did.  
In the middle of the night, or that morning,  
The time of death and who caused it is not known.  
I keep her in my pages of my pressing book
And I will frame her and love her
I will keep her faces preserved in paper and glass
I will keep her in the light
Even though she cannot change anymore
Her self is now sealed in place
I will keep her faced to the sun
I will keep her in the light
I will keep her.