Daffodils Blooming Too Early in March
In the garden, with pools of ice,
daffodils, fooled into
blossoming before spring,
sunlight reflected off the house
heating the mulched beds
of the earth, their trumpet heads
drooped on their green stalk,
like collapsed umbrellas,
yellow petals unfurling around
the white corona.
What to do to coax them
back into the underworld,
to compost and shredded bark,
and wait there in darkness,
for the leaf tips to send flower,
to telegraph the topsoil?
Oh, early risers, gold Narcissus,
you just have to do it,
the way we do, as if it were
nothing at all, only the wind
making that strident sound
that has yesterday in it.
JUDITH HARRIS is the author of three poetry books, Atonement and The Bad Secret (LSU) and Night Garden (Tiger Bark) and two critical books Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self through Language (SUNY Press) and The Poetry of Loss: Romantic and Contemporary Elegies (Routledge Press). Read more.