Jacqui Thewless (November,1955 / Manchester, UK)

Here are two wee daffs
for St David's Day, in a pot
my sister made a few inches high -
blue as the winter sea that laps Stromness,
rimmed with a green so close
to the cut stems you can see why

I placed them here. In Pembroke, the third
month of the year, like these two Welsh
emblems, seems to separate
a visionary's outlook from the cynic's
jaded view: one looks on,

with six-pointed perianth of shaded lemon
facing the window, with a frilly skirt no less
common than the sun - like someone who
knows the ropes, expecting nothing to surprise;

the other's golden garment falls beneath
the star-like Frisbee that simply
shows - as Blake's or Burns' or even
Wordsworth's verses do -
the way we ordinary mortals see daylight

after far-too-long-lasting nights, or on
the first day of spring, when garden daffodils come in.