Daffodils

Heads skewered with grief

Three Marys at the cross

(Christ was wire and wax

festooned on a dead tree )

Guardians of the rock,

their emerald tapers touch

the pale wick of the sun

and perish before the rose

bleeds on the solstice stone

and the cornstalk unloads

peace from hills of thorn

Spindrifting blossoms

from the gray comber of March

thundering on the world,

splash our rooms coldly with

first grace of light, until

the corn-tides throb, and fields

drown in honey and fleeces

Shawled in radiance

tissue of sun and snow

three bowl-bound daffodils

in the euclidian season

when darkness equals light

and the world's circle shudders

down to one bleeding point

Mary Mary and Mary

triangle of grief.