Accountability

Are you not accountable
to daffodils, dove of my youth?
Or are they too beautiful for you?
Too much to fence and parry with?
See how they take the winds
of March in beauty, brave the cold,
never ask you to stop and chat.
You could put them to a page,
scourge of my age, except
for frittering away your days
as if you were mountain water
with only the sea in mind,
as if you were not a knowing one
able to joust with the wind,
as if you were not a person,
but an airborne surrogate.
Are time and the flying seasons
scents you catch on the wing?
Sad as bad weather, love, cold in the fire,
wanting it fairer? No debt to be paid?
Lone as Grundy at the full of the moon
and as out of love as a hidden wrong?
Never a thought for the yellow flower?
Woebegone, when marvel’s to spare?
One dark heart, aroon, when leastly
devils are several for mocking?
Buds bursting, sweet hum in the bone,
and you not sung at core? Bells
sounding you, provoking you
to counter the deaths of winter?
Look, see Persephone’s light.
She returns to her mother again,
wing of my pen, drawn from earth
by the mothering force of the sun
without which you die. Blossoms
so yellow-bright they let March
surprise the half-asleep for whom
they are a roadside commonplace.
Wake up, my own, fast stuck
in the web as these. Worlds need the new,
rollouts red as your tongue, and you
with youth in your teeth, life to be sung.
Rub your eyes, minstrel. Look again.
The world is love, if you meet it so.
Write what the silence is saying.