Last year I bought helium birthday balloons
from an unspectacular ground floor gift shop
and hung them on Carole's chrome bedpost
in the Neurological acute care/trauma ICU
at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center.
Presently, if Carole's still strolled among us
her years would number seventy-six...mindful,
exercising prudence, passing on wisdom
looking over her shoulder long enough
to make certain no one mistook acquiescence
in time as a red flag warning others
future concessions now lay in limbo.
Today I mixed Carole's majestic ashes
with crushed Blue Dream flowers from her
favorite cannabis sativa herbaceous plant
in preparation for a voyage then released
the fusion of herbs and spent embers
into a rushing brook that intersected
and streamed along Carole's Memorial Grotto
allowing both to float on life-giving water-
if just for a while-before they became
one with the current, two with nature,
three with dust (life's final stage), and four
with her ascension leaving worldly manacles
that bound her to three quarters of a century's
pain, pleasure, hope and heartache far behind.
Carole's Memorial Grotto by Sterling Warner | Poetry Reed Diffuser
$20.00Price
