lillian the home poet

Bloom wherever you are planted, my dear.
Her mother’s sage advice.
And she did.

She fancied herself an annual,
as her life took many turns.
And always, she bloomed,
but never with perennial roots.

She took odd jobs to secure her keep.
Brought joy and happiness
wherever she landed,
for whatever her growing season.

She took a new name in every town.
Dahlia for Davenport. Pansy in Peoria.
Hitchhiking cross country
she became Zinnia in LA.

Suitors brought her flowers,
obsequiously wooing her.
When they got too close.
she uprooted once again.

She carried one note always
written in careful hand,
folded inside the pocket
of her well-worn floral wrap.

When last I seek the sun
and it rises not on me,
place me ‘neath the fertile ground
with marker at my head.

Etch my epitaph in simple script
that all might finally know.
Here lies Marigold.
Daughter of Chrys Anthemum,
and dweller of the Cosmos.

Day 10: National Poetry Writing Month, where the challenge is to write a poem every day. Written for Toads where today we are to write an Ekphrasis: a poem that is motivated by a work of art. 

This work of art by Odilon Redon (1840 – 1916) is titled Mystery. He is a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist . “My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.”