Thursday morning in May
Green blades, with knife edged precision,
sliced early through frozen earthwhile winter's cold hung round,
like the pale moon's face scolding,
staring down spring.
Hardy, the daffodils tried
to brave face it, bloom despite,
but only one succeeded,
dawning yellow like the absent sun.
The rain today is light, the air mild.
The sort of day that in other springs
would encourage a burgeoning of delight-
instead brings only dampness, misery
and one lone, nodding yellow head
in a vase upon my table.
Jill MacCormack
Yesterday my son Lucas picked the only daffodil to bloom in any of the three locales they're planted here in our small yard. They tried to come up during that last blizzard of early April (you know the one) and failed to develop beyond their green blades. He put the flower in a single stem vase he and his two sisters gave me a year ago for Mother's day. The vase is quite old and gilded in gold and worth money, or so the kids say. I love it because its from them. And because today it holds my little survivor.
I awoke early this morning to go to the doctors. Bad throat again. When I walked into the dining room feeling altogether miserable and far too sorry for myself, a light fragrance wafting through our strictly scent free home caught me off guard. Wondering a moment what it was, I had forgotten the daffodil was there. Noticing it, I leaned in to the vase and was softly struck by the gentle scent of the single flower. There is nothing like the remembrance that arises from the scent of a beloved flower. It was as though it humbly offered "But I am here...".
It is so easy amidst the desperate loneliness of being human, amidst the busyness, upstream in the incessant motion of time, to forget the power of connection with all living things and the wonderful centering of the present moment.
(Notably, the little purple woodland violets
peppering our back yard aren't bothered by late winters or the moodiness of people.)
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