Daffodils, Parents (and a Peek at Tomorrow)

Here are a couple of poems you might like.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

by Robert Hayden


Plus a final daffodil poem from my friend, a very gifted poet:

DAFFODILS
at a girls' school

The halls of our high school
quivered with the voices of girls
selling frilly-mouthed daffodils
to mark the start of Spring.

We girls, our first years there,
wore dark wool and saddle shoes.
In time, we graduated into gray
blazers and dun-colored weejuns.

But always the daffodils returned
to school at the onset of Spring,
as if the first flares of radiant,
sunshiny flowers could erase

everything drab or lackluster
around us -- even dingy winter.

by Lenny Lianne, 2008


And don't think the poems will stop today. The madness and magic will continue! There still is poetry to experience, including poems from you, and even from me. Really. See you tomorrow!