Marigold

The dried husk of a seed, the horseshoe curl of a marigold - calendula, little calendar, little weather-glass, summer's bride, merry bud, Mary Gold - it has many names performs many duties. It calls to it the hoverfly, nourishes, makes medicine and garland this jewel of the soil, this gemma humo.
A man with tattooed skin wears a necklace of sacred marigold as he whirls in dervish dance to summon within him those Gods who would inspire him to Nirvana, Moksha, Heaven or whatever peace awaits his furnished soul. His skin sweats, stained yellow by the lifeblood of the bloom and he is infused by the sweet scent of devotion.
Under the watchful gaze of the shaman a woodlouse picks its way through the petals. The shaman raises a single lens from a long broken pair of spectacles the better to watch as the beetle, antenna wiggling, moves into the center of the flower where it curls into a tight armour plated ball. The shaman plucks a petal and rolling it in her mouth makes a paste which she paints in a single stroke along the forehead of the sick old man all the way along the crest of his nose across the lips and down falling from the chin along to the nook in the bone at the collarbone meeting.Taking the remaining petals she throws them into the air so they spiral and flutter coming to rest across the body and the bed scattering a blessing of improving health.
A tear balanced on a pearl, each a mirror of the other. The tear on the pearl, the pearl on purple silk woven in the finest hand with silver thread in the depiction of a flower, the calendula the bloom of life. Within the tear and the pearl the silver glow of a flower bud bright with light.
This bud begins to move, each petal extending, stretching and falling into place until a silver marigold is revealed within these private universe. Then it begins to shrivel to brown and collapse until finally the horseshoe curl of a seed is suspended within both tear and pearl. The twin image of a hand looms in each and the pearl removed taken to the soil and planted. It bears snow and rain until warmed in the weak spring sun the pearl begins to burst and sends into the earth root and leaf, stem and bud until there within a field of swaying orange and yellow flowers is the silver gleam of a true gemma humo.