Sunday, September 25, 2022

Daffodils Where a House Used to Be

 

 

Every hour of every day there is love in grass

Why else would deer graze so hungrily?

 

A Cape Cod, white with blue dormers where the kids once slept

Family sit-down dinners, birthdays, holidays—now all grass 

 

A porch swing complete with voo-doo flyswatter to hit an AM radio 

when the Yankees hit a home run

 

Nights filled with stars 

and frogs and crickets and the rising mist 

 

Once a week or so that whole house would worry 

enough to make the grass quiver every minute that car was late

 

That house could stuff dandelions with dreams and good soup 

but the girls would safely marry well, yes of course

 

and the savings bonds would be more than enough, plenty

Grandsons would go to work in flying cars 

 

that ran on rainwater

each generation better and better

 

Progress

 

The grass, knee-high on a deer is really the perfect lawn 

as immaculate as any garden

 

“You can’t have The King’s lawn 

without The Queen’s garden,” an echo in my head said

 

all this today, an epilogue to dreams too bitter for deer

whizzing by the smoked-glass windows of my truck

 

row upon row of daffodils waving at me in the breeze 

little yellow flowers with broad shoulders


By Girard Tournesol

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