DAFFODILS

DAFFODILS

Through long winters
my feet have traced a new path
through unpatterned shadows
from ice-laden limbs of bare trees.
Bare trees cannot shelter
...even sparrows...
yet they do offer themselves
as cold crystal prisms
as pale sun warms the waiting
for some sound of spring.
There! Yellow chalice-faces,
green-stemmed hope--
daffodils breaking through--
offering--There!

--Barbara Smith Stoff
(written many years ago as I sat in a library
reading Wordsworth's poem)