For Ella
I love a wild daffodil,
the one that grows
where she’s planted—
along a wooded highway
left to her own abandon,
but not abandoned.
Her big yellow head
leaning toward or away
from the sun. Not excluded
but exclusive, her trumpet
heralds no one, not even
the Canada geese—
their long-necked honks
announcing their journey.
She’ll be here less
than a season, grace us
with green slender stems,
strong enough to withstand
rain and spring’s early chill.
And when she goes,
what remains she’ll bury
deep inside the bulb of her,
take a part of me with her
until she returns.
This poem is excerpted from The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace & Renewal (Storey Publishing, 2023), edited by James Crews, a collection of highly accessible, uplifting poetry celebrating the small wonders and peaceful moments of everyday life.
This is the fourth of five poems from the anthology reprinted in Terrain.org over the second week of October 2023. As an introduction to the poems, read James Crews’s “The Wonder of Small Things”.
Reprinted by permission of author.
January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor of English at Salem State University. She is the author of Rewilding (CavanKerry Press), a finalist for the 2019 Paterson Poetry Prize; Misery Islands (CavanKerry Press; and Underlife (CavanKerry Press).
Header photo by Jarmila, courtesy Pixabay. Photo of January Gill O’Neil by John Andrews.
