Blue Daffodils

By Karen Chamberlain

Snowmelt raises the unslaked river,

sprays a halo round the full moon,

dissolving the stars in a roar of light.

I walk past lawns buttered and limed

with moonlight and streetlight, past

rows of blue daffodils, cerulean tulips

strung  like paper dolls along an iron fence.

 

The night is fragrant with the day’s

cut grass. Glazed with mist, the sky

glistens deep midnight blue, not so much a color

as a communion, hue infusing darkness,

void giving birth to light. Black no longer

morose, but struck with longing, porous

with blue. And blue lucid with black,

austere, expansive, voluminous with ebony.

 

Shades of unanswerable prayer.

 

Under such a sky, I find myself wanting

to speak with some imagined ghost

of peace. Hear it say, perhaps,

that tonight all lovers are old, all distances

close within the heart’s claim. No need

for faith, no blame nor invocation. Say

that all we need is here, earth tilting

its face toward moon, moon sailing

over widely separate roofs, where

friends wake, not knowing why,

and think of each other.

 

No such ghost appears, of course,

and above the moon-paved streets

the dark wall of the horizon looms

like a cancelled future. But for now, tonight,

the sky is enormous with promise, big enough

to cover everything. Alive

with a blue so blue

it greets me everywhere.