After Shirley Kaufmann
Marigolds
not gold but orange
hold up their heads
on green stems
in a glass water jug
standing on her tiled table
A woman sits at the table
smiling
the marigolds smile back
She reads a poem
whose lines zigzag
on the page without end stops
about a jacaranda tree
a jay in its branches
leaves that fall off
blue flowers left behind
a blue flowered aisle
of jacarandas
like the blue collanade
flowering in May
long after she’d left Funchal
like the woman in the poem
still holding blue
far from Lebanon