Daffodils

This poem was published in the Dec/Jan 2024 edition of The London Magazine.

The daffodils are trying hard 

To say fuck you to the Berlin winter.

They emerged in January, 

Broke through the soil,

A complete disregard 

For nature. 

On the balcony;

Gloves,

Watering cans,

Unsewn packets of seeds, 

Summer memories, abandoned,

Mauve tinted dead asters,

A forgotten sense of lust,

All conspire to make up 

Overlapping constellations,

Orion’s Belt, Cassiopeia, 

Something major, something minor. 

Having outgrown their pot, 

A black plastic number,

Functional, rather than decorative,

Two plants lay on the concrete floor,

Winter saw their death, and they have lain there, 

Dessicated, in their last embrace, since November.

Their complex root systems exposed

To the cruel Berlin winter.

A trowel points towards the spilled earth

That we said we would clean away

Before winter came.

Forgotten secateurs idly threaten to cut back

Dead plants and brush

That grew in last year 

whilst we sat in the late summer heat,

And planted the daffodils together.