The Color of Daffodils

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 dimmer.

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.

Lights from the window fell over her like a silken shroud, the colour of Daffodils.