Volume 32 Issue 1, 2 & 3 | Posted: March 14, 2018
A wash of rain and spring brings
daffodils two weeks early,
the earth resurrects itself
in yellow, opens up one
memory at a time, each
starred face perfectly complete
the way the dead rise as I
hope it will be, someday, when
words stand still and an unsung
poem at the back of the mind
pushes through black tunnels, no
longer afraid, believing
the sun. Perhaps daffodils
and poems rise on the last days
of winter calling again
and again until the heart
remembers death’s a season
not the whole and the open
throat a single ray of light
while a poet in the rain
surrounded by daffodils
writes a mantra: daffodil,
daffodil, o daffodil.
A wash of rain and spring brings
daffodils two weeks early,
the earth resurrects itself
in yellow, opens up one
memory at a time, each
starred face perfectly complete
the way the dead rise as I
hope it will be, someday, when
words stand still and an unsung
poem at the back of the mind
pushes through black tunnels, no
longer afraid, believing
the sun. Perhaps daffodils
and poems rise on the last days
of winter calling again
and again until the heart
remembers death’s a season
not the whole and the open
throat a single ray of light
while a poet in the rain
surrounded by daffodils
writes a mantra: daffodil,
daffodil, o daffodil.
(Leaf Press, 2000)
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Leanne McIntosh
