The Everlasting

A fist of flowers, anonymous as prayers,
a dozen field-plucked purple asters, droop
prone on a ledge a yard below that name
chased deep into harsh rock. Only four letters,
forty-nine years dismembered by a dash, peep pink
from the thorax of the granite ledge she loved.
Some florist roses fill a water glass
leaning atilt beneath the ledge’s foot.
I can guess at the names of those who gathered flowers
or forked a couple of bills across a counter,
but as the petals wilt below a name
that will outlast all eyes that read it now,
they speak as well as names or voices can
about fragility, flowering, fading away:
they speak for frost and death. The asters speak
out of a world of change, of repetition
for those events that only happen once.