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.

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