Daffodils




If Spring is a hat, I’m standing on my head today.  
I can pogo around this room, bounce
through my door, down the street.  At first,
my eyes tried to swivel to where they used to be,
resisting change.  But knew they’d better get used to it.
You don’t want to change, not even a little bit.  
You don’t want anyone to move your cheese,  
but there it goes.  Water flows upwards
from the bathroom taps. The light’s on the floor,
a disco-mushroom.  My cat catapults through the window,
a furry food-ball. Man and drift-dog glide by my gate.

Passion, serenity, nonsense -
everyone talks backwards: fried chicken.
People grow younger each moment.  If this keeps on
they’ll reach the womb, trees returning to the seed,
to the tree before it, the seed, the tree before it,
to the original Bodhi tree where the enlightened Buddha
un-meditates, returns to the forest, from there to his palace,
lifts his heavy golden jewelry, adorns his ears:  
Prince Siddharta.  But I won’t be around to see it.  
The clock ticks widdershins.
There goes my breakfast.  

I’m feeling sick, and now the plate is spic and span
in the cupboard.  I look backward to taking my first steps.
I always enjoyed crawling, my mother says,
as her skin smoothes out and she stands up properly,
takes a pride in her appearance, unlearns hairdressing.
I see, in the far distance, the day of my birth.
I have courage on the way down, as I unlearn
what I know now, go through what I went through.
The pattern is simple this time; going
around the next corner, knowing
the cracks in the pavement. Returning

to my grandmother as her hair is unbrushed,
blusher removed from her precious face.
They raise her out of her coffin, drive her home.
Grandmother wakes, smiling. Her cheeks pinken
and they carry her downstairs.  Her walking stick
gets walked less and less, she removes her specs.
Her hands unfurl.  She rubs them till they’re warm,
grasps the abandoned knitting needles
from the glass coffee table.  She starts clicking,  
pulls back rimples of knit-one purl-one rib,
unknitting a new blue ball of wool.

But my children will go before I do.  I must enjoy them
this time, not make the muddle I made.
I won’t give them tasks to do but let them choose,
let them be children.  I won’t insist on difficult things
which are too hard or too old for them.  
This time, I’ll stay with their father.
We’ll go out to a countryside with curdled milk skies,
where sunshine smells like a jar of daffodils
in a classroom full of kids, finger-painting.  
We’ll sit down on the lightly toasted hillside
and look forward to how we met.



© professoryackle (Sara Pitt) All Rights Reserved