On my white window ledge
the shadows and the paint are cracked
by early Spring-soft sunlight which,
between my pots and jars and plants,
is fresh with birdsong
and the sweet green scent of a morning lawn’s
cool perspiration.
My daffodils are drying.
All this week they warmed themselves
and beamed and bloomed upon my ledge.
Now I see them yield to the light,
papery and, with old age, translucent.
But still the stalks are green and wet!
Corpulent in the jar’s round light,
They guzzle.
I think of them dropped limp in a bin
Trickling against impenetrable black plastic.
No. Not yet.
Wrinkled and wafery as their faces have grown
they still bask and beam,
Never not beautiful,
Somewhat alive.
All this time a fly squirms in the water, twitching against the glass,
tiny legs and wings scrabbling for flight,
sunk,
by an unfamiliar gravity.
And all this time, those tiny legs and wings have been twitching in my chest,
But I chose the death of daffodils
and the scent of sunlight.
And even now my thought is only
how best to capture
those minuscule death throes?
What would be the most poetic way
for that thimbleful of life
to splutter to a halt
in my vase
and on my page?
Illustration by Liv Fugger.
