Silke Lance
Oct 20, 2004, 06:03 AM
Afternoon
by: Fannie Stearns Gifford (Davis)
Some one is coming to call.
Up the red brick path between daffodils dancing
I see white ruffles that blow:
A parasol, dipping against the sun.
It is some one stout, and warm in her new white gloves.
My old green apron is smudged with the garden-mould.
My hands are the hands of a peasant-woman. My hair
Comes tumbling down into my eyes.
I wish I could lie down flat like a child
And hide in the grass, while she rings and rings,
And sticks her card under the door with a sigh,
And puffs away down the path.
I wish -- but the parasol bobs,
And she bobs like a mandarin's lady,
Smiling and bridling and beckoning.
If I were a daffodil, in an apron of green and gold--
But there she stands on the path,
And her gloves are so new they squeak with newness and stoutness,
And I know she will talk of the weather and stay an hour--
If I were a daffodil--
Or a little cool blinking bug
Down in the daffodil leaves--
+Steven Curtis Lance
Oct 20, 2004, 06:31 AM
Mausi, you find the most wonderful poems! I have never even seen this one before, and I just love it! I feel this way a lot; I'm really reclusive about people coming to call, as you know (especially Mormons!).
And I LOVE anything which has anything to do with daffodils. I wish you could hear the Orange High School Chamber Singers sing my "Daffodils" choral rhapsody; I think it's about the best thing I ever wrote.
Thanks for finding and posting these wonderful treasures. One is tempted to call them buried treasures, actually, since they are so little known, some of them, like this one. But how I wish they WERE well and widely known, as they richly deserve to be. Sometimes I wonder if anyone will know of anything of mine someday. Well, at least you will... and that's all that matters to me.
My fingers are getting stiff! It's freezing in here with my furnace flooded out... I have to go and roll up in a blanket, with Fred on top and a cup of tea from a bag you sent me (oops! Am I supposed to mention that? Hehe... those sniffer-dogs must have stuffy noses this time of year...).
I love you, honey. Thank you for these wonderful poems you post here; you have single-handedly created and sustained the favorites board.
I am really grateful to you for what you do here; I learn a lot because of your efforts, your wonderful discoveries and your sharing of them with us here upon these pages you enrich and you sustain so wisely and so well.
*~Amin mela ile~*