Only Flowers Seem Not to Die

On our May Day anniversary
I went to the garden we planted
and filled a basket with daisies
and delphiniums. Though choked
with weeds and guarded by a
rusty hoe the garden still sends
petaled tokens and the morning
offered me this memory with
blossoms from our haunted wildwood.
Their fragile colors reminded me
how you opened your arms in delight
each spring when they returned
and knew in them the roots of survival . . .
Then the hard hammers of fact
began to pound in my head.