Spring Cleaning

Yes, I have put away childish things,

But haphazardly, hastily,

As if preparing for houseguests,

Stuffing old fears and tears in drawers,

Monsters shoved back under the bed,

And wayward wants inside my head,

So that my life now resembles

A poorly stuffed pillow,

Little clumps of softness

Finding holes in the hems

And sometimes breaking free.

Daffodils

Daffodils stretch their new limbs

Resolutely slice

Through sheets of mushy maple leaves.

Reclaimed

It's freezing outside, so I spent the evening cocooned in my apartment, fantasizing about spring. Somehow stream of consciousness led me to thoughts of spring cleaning and trash piles heaped along the curb. The result of my musing is this poem:

On the first of spring

A cast-off scrap of obsolescence

Hapless victim of domestic zeal

Is salvaged from the curbside

Gingerly returned to relevance

By the veteran hands of an antique soul.

At Red Butte Garden

How to resist the sultry whisper

of a bed of daffodils in April?

A luxurious lie, a gilded mask

to obscure the russet earth from view.

I tear my eyes away

and pursue a path

marked by the crackling sound

of dry, feral grasses in tête-à-tête with the wind.

The real yellow here is a smattering of wildflower

that refuses to sleep with rich topsoil,

instead eloping with the renegade red earth.

Original composed 23 April 2010, completed 26 September 2010