Resurrection Fern

Sunlight diffused

wearily

across the dusty black table.

Golden dust

swirled lazily down.

Soil and spider web coated

pots of aloe and

sharp tongued mother-in-laws.

Aunt stood

the brittle celluloid watering can

in her hand

prepared to feed the dry ones.


I sat on the front porch swing

finishing orange sherbet

before coming over

to stand.

She held a plastic lid.

“Would you like to see the resurrection fern?”

I had seen it a million times before.

But it would be hours

before Mom would come.

We could bring the dry and brown

to life ever so slowly again.

Awkward baptism

of tendrils tightly bound.

Momentarily fresh again.

We stared so hard

waiting for the sweet surprise.

“Just like Jesus rising from the dead.”

Finding the rolling drops

pooled along the

farthest recesses of its reach.

I turned back to recite

my Bible verses

and dig for snails.

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd -
A host of golden daffodils

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I, at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

-- William Wordsworth