Daffodils

DAFFODILS

[The Magnifique Daffodil ]

Golden in paddocks that poets might fancy
Dancing in rows, splendid and free;
Dreams of riches from earth’s rare essence,
And need of wealth: prosperity.

Pickers must bend, quick-fingers glean,
Stems into sheaves, heads akimbo;
Bunches of pleasure for the shops and the markets
Gifts of God’s-country for cities below.

Masses of petals, the trumpets resounding,
Blessings enough ! Too much to disperse;
The shops are full, the markets are flooded,
A Glut ! The trade is in a curse.

What can be done with a surplus of flowers!
Might commerce! So cheap and wholesale;
Thrown down with the garbage, dreams to the compost,
Where gilding fades, essence is pale.

Back in the paddocks the rejects are nodding,
For green-silver leaves to idolize;
A triumph of nature over selection,
Like sideshow clowns, lampooning enterprise.

1985 © Wayne David Knoll

The Economy of overproduction is a scandal. Flowers of the absurd become a flowering of evil. I grew ”Magnifique” an early variety in what I discovered was a late district. Men are fools, especially men who dream, but Don Quixote was such a fool after Christ’s own heart. We have to plant our dream oats somewhere. So this is the nugget I panned out of those fields. The scraped skies of the city below are caught gob-open with a trumpet blast out of this marketplace bloom. It is my pleasure to fool that overgrown orifice with the eternal sideshow ping-pong of blooming asides of word.