With Spring, the medics came, scripts and search lights,
blood returns to extremities, blushes and a faint
tingling sensation.  

The landscape is a bruise.  

“Say ahhh,” says a medic to a daffodil
who showed up three weeks late, and then refused
to join in the synchronized dance
of the Easter parade—  

the travesty, people dressed as flowers,
dayglo vigil cheering on the mass resurrection, 
only to have a daffodil hold its breath, 
pass through shades of red like Dante, 

apparent Narcissus wannabe. The naysayers
weren’t having it. Some thought
it had become a Communist.  

Pygmalion even tried to teach it
to roll over and play dead.
“You’ll jump through hoops for me,
Dracula,” he rhapsodized, which just confused
the daffodil even more.  

The medic poked the tongue depressor into its bloom,
too far, it turns out: he saw way back—
the decayed leaf matter from which it sprung,  

traces of the armadillo roadkill from last Spring,
the tendon and fur the wind planted all along
the backroads—enter Johnny Appleseed
cloaked like the Grim Reaper to shield
himself from March’s chilled breeze—  

miniscule roadkill seeds that split open
mouthfuls of canopy and fur and sprouts
of light, until the dandelions as they tear apart
purr, show the daffodils how to start over.