Wish for Continuance

Marigold, Tagetes erecta, la caléndula, cempohualxochitl

Unless I’d picked so many,
greedy against disaster
the afternoon before the hurricane,
I wouldn’t have known
even after this long: your scent
is multiple, not only the sharp warning
of brushed-past leaves but a profound,
encompassing sweetness belonging
to petals only and softer
than I’d have thought,
flower to fill the palm,
flower held close over centuries
before you were stolen east,
across continents and back—
north, now, of your first home,
but shadowed here by hotter days.
Ruffled, sun-facing, sun-enacting selves
whose nectar filled the living room air
that night as the storm came,
a small one, the weather said, so we didn’t leave,
as the gale made weird loud havoc,
as three houses down the power pole split
and the lights went, as the boards we’d hastened up
to cover the windows held fast,
as the all-clear came from town
but was a lie, as we fell asleep anyway,
to the winds, and in the morning
your scent still filled the room,
which was still a room, and us still in it—
I’ll tend you, I said, as long as my life,
and you, stay longer, for the bees,
whose furred bodies match your wealth
of petals; for us who, August, September,
still, November, bend
to touch our faces to yours.

Read more from Issue 22.1.