To be planted out.

Chrysanthemums
are flowers for the dead in France,
for they are in bloom on All Souls' - All Hallows - Day.
My mother loved chrysanthemums.
I too loved their russet colours and the mysterious
erotic smell that they don't have in France.
Every autumn there was a big cut
bunch of them in our narrow hallway, bought
from a seedsman, nurseryman who lived just 50 yards
from where she was born, and later taught
(and later still was buried),
and whom she'd taught when first he went to school.
Her birthday was on the third of November, 1907.

This past third of November I stole
one of hundreds of to-be-neglected
and wind-scattered pots
of gold-and-russet remembrance-chrysanthemums
from the pleasant little cemetery
where my periwinkle-covered grave awaits,

and placed it on my balcony.