Subject: The Marigold Lady

From: [email-masked]
Date: 25 Nov 1994 01:26:16 GMT

She sells books from nine to six. They are
good books, well bound, well written, colorful
to the eye, and children love them, but
the town is poor. She sits waiting for hours
for one grandmother to come in and buy one book
for a favored grandchild. The owner of the store
is her friend; she cannot leave her just now, but the store,
she knows, is not her place in life. All
she has ever wanted is to farm: at evening,
when the dinner things are cleared, and the hot sun
drops behind the cottonwood, she farms.
Food for the ducks, and soapy water for broccoli;
old lettuce gone to seed comes out; the hay
is rearranged, and fall peas go in. She stops
only to hear the geese pass overhead,
then bends among her plants until the stars,
first one and then another, leap and are caught
in the hair of approaching night, which is
so like her hair. She comes in stained with soil
to the elbows, and leans against the table,
extending an open palm. "Look," she says,
her eyes on fire. "Marigold seeds! And these
are calendulas."

Richard Bear    1993
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Richard Bear                                         [email-masked]
University of Oregon    Stony Run Farm                  all disclaimers apply
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