The Color of Daffodils
Five springs have passed…
She always loved the gift of daffodils.
Those soft sunny cups could coax happiness
even on the darkest days.
My mother called them, Maerzenbecher* —
they were her wedding flowers.
In my bookcase, the young couple
framed forever in black and white —
she, suited in gray, clutching
her bouquet of promises,
he, in dress uniform from the wrong side,
their eyes pooled with muted hope.
Amid sporadic Allied bombing,
they married on a cloudy day in April.
As defeat grew imminent,
my parents’ path grew dim.
Yet even in the rubble and ruin of war,
spring bloomed, persisting in its attempts
to heal what seemed unhealable.
Surrender came in May,
the world finally relieved
after six long years of terrible tumult
and cataclysmic carnage.
My father returned from a Russian camp
two years later, starved but not broken.
One cold dawn, with smaller dreams
and their boy swaddled in the pram,
they fled through greening forests,
crossing to freedom —
Red soldiers firing at their backs.
Nearly a lifetime later,
in our adopted country,
the vibrant yellow blossoms
on my table announce a kinder season,
their fragrance infusing my mind
with stories of the past.
Its been cold this March,
a robin’s song echos through the trees.
Five springs have passed since
my mother’s body lay before me
in eerie stillness.
A simple golden spray
resting over her silent heart,
as I prayed for her soul,
touched her cheek one last time.
Light from the window
fell over her like a silken shroud,
the color of daffodils.
* The German word for daffodils.
Grace notes: My mother died on March 21st, 2018 at the age of ninety-six.
She was born on a small farm in the former east Germany in 1922
and had an eighth grade education. My family immigrated to the US
in 1956 after 9 years in west Germany. My mother came a long way from her simple roots and loved her adopted country, although Germany always remained deep in her heart.
Thank you for reading and as always I appreciate your comments and claps very much. You might also like my earlier poem below, which is about the last day my older brother and I spent in Germany before my family immigrated to the US.
