The Marigold
Silhouetted by a golden sunset, he sat in an empty parking lot watching the pigeons dance for their supper of day-old bakery bread. I watched him from across the street, debating whether or not to interrupt his evening sojourn with his feathered friends or continue my solitary walk home. His familiar toothless smile greeted me as I sat down next to him on the sun-baked pavement. “Watch this,” he says as he tossed an arch of breadcrumbs into the air to the appreciative flutter of wings. “See how the sun lights up their feathers?” The sun backlit their feathers with a radiant gold aura. He smiles and whispers, “Don’t they look like angels?” I nod in silence. We sit together for a while, watching the long shadows of the pigeons creep across the pavement, as he rambled on Jack Kerouac-style about his day’s misfortunes and adventures. I listen as the sun hid behind the downtown brick buildings. He understands I need to get home. Home. As I rise to my feet, he says he has something for me, a gift. He rummages in a tattered plastic shopping bag and pulls out a wilted yellow marigold that he had plucked from someone’s garden. He carefully presents the delicate flower to me, with lesson from one lonely soul to another: “Just remember,” he says, “never forget that you carry the sunshine wherever you go.” And with that, I walked home rich with merry gold in my pocket.