Fifty daffodils, one hundred
hyacinth—buried
last fall produce
only a handful of half-way resurrections:
limp wings on weak
necks emerging from a cracked
tomb—the wrong
soil and a long
winter of low
temperatures without insulating snow.

Content yourself with this:
a few lines, less
than you conceived
by the time they arrived—
scribbled on the back of something else; almost forgotten
between their thought and the interruption
of children, practice,
questions of dinner and the day, cookies
for tomorrow, the last
batch
burned inedible—
and their retrieval;

or with dandelions—too many
to count—bright as any
daffodil but longer lasting, cheerful,
less temperamental,
and a neighbor's sign: Free
Daylilies, already
tall, fresh dug, ready to return
to bad soil like saints to heaven.