Daffodils

Well, it's March. The creative laze is passing. Finally, finally. Now I'm waiting for April.

March's flower is the daffodil--and I don't have any pictures of daffodils, so here are some day lilies from my garden last summer-- they won't bloom again til July, but they're yellow, and they're vaguely suggestive of daffodils. Kind of like jonquilian cognates. . .

Besides promoting cancer awareness, daffodils are symbols of the spring. . .and oddly enough, they are one of Aquarius' flowers--a month late. Not that anything associated with Aquarius is normal. It is the "sign of the future"--so maybe it is appropriate that it's flower be one that will only come into season after the sun has moved along.


Here's William Wordsworth's 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.

Interesting that he likens them to stars. . . the link between stars and flowers is one that still fascinates me. Children doodle star-shapes meaning flowers, and every star sign is associated with certain flowers. Botanical life on earth comes from the stars as surely as we do . . . and many flowers seem possessed of undeniably starry signatures--almost like they're gesturing, twinkling, implying.