Last Rites

 

I’d always loved flowers 

and you helped me fill my garden, 

brought a plant 

each time we met. 

It was our little ritual 

a recurring theme, 

flowers for my garden 

to bring me joy. 

I would like to lie in that garden 

in the mist of the soft sweet smelling mist

of them  

for ever. 

​

But we all have our time, 

our time to live, 

and our time to die 

and only your flowers  

will bloom eternally 

each in its season,  

in their own little ritual 

living on beyond me. 

​

I want no funeral rituals. 

When I’m dead I won’t see them on my grave, won’t know that you’ve brought them for me won’t know if you haven’t. 

The flowers you carry  

in that season should be for you, 

you that I left behind. 

Don’t let them die 

for me. 

​

Nobody wants dead flowers, 

least of all, dead people.