Daisies

with snow still on the ground

Here’s one I dug out of the early files, one that maybe deserves to see the light of day. You know how it is—some poems don’t fit in a book exactly, and they end up by the wayside. Like these daisies.

Daisies
	
This flowering left by the mowers, these white petals 
wheeling around their yellow eyes, breeze-bent:
it’s easy to turn on the sentiment, but no matter 

which petal you land on, he may love you and hate you 
simultaneously. The daisy has no interest in your 
childhood, your touching childish efforts to cheer, 

your bouquets ripped up by the roots. It is empty 
of any responsibility to end on the right petal. It is 
empty of any responsibility to decorate midsummer. 

Likewise, it is empty of the mists of morning and 
the soft thud of deer hooves in evening. It has no need 
of rhyme or any other holy thing. It does not reject 

its own death; indeed, it would be lost without it. 
Sin, too, and redemption: sun and rain—why use 
fancy words?  Why exercise enthusiasm? To be alive 

doesn’t require enthusiasm, but simply an adherence 
to format, a multiplication and differentiation 
of cells. So, you’re walking along, picking daisies: 

have you lost a lover or gained one? Are you sad 
to be growing old, to be stiffer, less energetic? Who 
am I talking to?  It’s only me. When I think of Whitman 

and Dickinson, even Swinburne, I think how futile 
to keep my own words coming day after day, with 
the family clamoring for attention, declaring 

that only I can fill the void in their lives. Or is it me, 
thinking I’m the answer to everybody’s prayer, the one 
with the recipe for Elegant Chicken Casserole?  

Still, I pick a large bouquet, bring it home, shake off 
the ants, put it in a teapot, this art no worse 
than any other It says “I love you,” in a Hallmark 

kind of way that at least is understood by most, 
a gesture in a field of hopeful gestures.