Fifteen Pages About Daffodils
It should never be illegal to write about daffodils
but maybe fifteen pages of verse
on daffodils
should result in a warning from the court
instead of publication
and eventual enshrinement in the curriculum,
that's all I'm saying.
Maybe the poem is a metaphor for something else,
a beat-generation, wandering prose-story
not about yellow petals so much
as hookers, nuns, heroin, and blues music.
But as I'm scanning page one
I see a lot of green leaves and coronas,
floral tubes and ovaries,
tepals, pollen, and stamen.
The poet really loves this flower.
And details.
A flip through pages two and three features
petals hanging down or erect,
bulbs and stems,
stalks, sap, terminal buds
and a shotgun blast of small, round stains
where a previous reader sneezed
while drinking diet cola.
Skip to page seven,
and, thank heavens, it's different.
We are down in the roots
in the dark, bacterial soil,
shrinking down with the bulb
full of black seeds
and maybe the the depths of the poet's soul
or so I think we are meant to gather.
It's death and rebirth, death and rebirth,
all the way down.
Down to page fourteen, scanning ahead
and sadly, the bud is bursting forth.
We're probably going to get a reprise of page one
as we're slipping off our
membranous tunic,
pushing away the corky stern
and seeing coronas once again,
like an acid trip without dropping acid,
full of tepals and floral tubes.
The last verse, on page fifteen,
is still about daffodils.
There's not a broken bottle
nor a cigarette stub in sight,
not a hippie, nor an innocent child,
not even a poet,
someone to ponder life's lesson
or wonder what it's all about.
Well, it's about fifteen pages, dude.
And that's my poem
about a poem
about fifteen pages
on daffodils.
-- Eric Gallagher
