She pauses, kneeling in her sun washed garden,

Damp earth freshly turned with the worn old trowel;

she remembers many years ago a stranger handed her

a yellow mum

and asked if she would smile

she had brushed soft petals across her smooth face then

and tried to think of something nice

breezes catching her long, soft hair

and had let him snap the photo all the while thinking

‘but I am not a flower child’

Looking down she sees perfection in the row of furrows she has dug

This little plot so orderly and reconciled;

lifting up the little pack of seeds

she lets them fall,

scattering them all around so recklessly instead

and now that she has gone quite wild

how very easy it would be

to smile like that

will no one ask her?