Daffodils

Daffodils grow along the green garden

where my mother planted them so long ago,

and I feel like Odysseus watching their eyes come up,

and the wind blows from the wild northwest,

the dark soil swims with living things

The sun comes up, a boiling cauldron,

and the flowers thoroughly consume the light

so that the daffodils might bow their yellow heads.

It happens every year that they come

to blow my heart wide open, and grow there.

When I think of death, I think of these flowers.

They bloom mainly for beauty,

but the living things in the soil

eat them and so are eating away my memory.

But yet they come back in abundance.

I imagine the flowers cry,

their headstrong yellow tops fighting against the rough wind,

and the insects underneath that are solely for decay.

And sometimes decay wins.

And sometimes the flowers win.

And I am naturally on the side of beauty.

But really, we are both the losers and the victors

But you are here now,

I hope the world is enough to make you happy.