Signs of Spring

Vase of Daffodils

Bright enough to burn

Into a bleakly urban Tuesday morning -

Vase of yellow sunshine on my window sill.

Brewery sketched greyly behind

Is not redeemed, however.

Opened during the night,

Their faces now crane upwards

Towards Mother Sun

As she peers downwards

Through concrete fingers.

Charm and pathos mixed.

What price such effort

When beauty is already

Severed from purpose?

Theirs is a brief moment

Without perpetuity.

Now is given up

In favour of a posterity

Already gone.

Purposefully purposeless,

They earn a certain dignity

                                                                                 And in cauterising today's pain

                                                                                 Who is to say

                                                                                 That they lack meaning.

  

©J.S.Watts

Vase of Daffodils was first published in Carillon magazine and appears in the poetry collection Cats and Other Myths by J.S.Watts (Lapwing Publications, 2011)