Growing Lavender

When you died in July,
I was sick of flowers,
picking through wilted
funeral arrangements.
I scorned nature’s cycle,
surrendered my gardens
to her wrath,
fall and winter.
Then I saw the red shoots
of spring’s peonies, fell
on my knees and pulled
quack grass from their roots.
I felt your life under
my fingernails, in my veins ?
a transfusion
of who you were and are.
But it was the lavender,
the scent of heaven on my hands,
the song of the honeybees,
that went straight to my heart
and healed me.