Daffodils at Easter

Thoughts of you oft cross my mind
A bit like Wordsworth's daffodils
Plagiarism of a kind
In middle age the theme still thrills.

This metaphor, where can it go?
You are not yellow, it's not spring
And yet your image seems to flow
Like the lake, a moving thing.

I have no couch on which to lie
My mind goes vacant when I'm tired
But it's true I see you in mind's eye
Something stirs, my muse is fired.

Wordsworth's ode I learnt by heart
I recited it for my exam
Since then it's always been a part
Of me, the way I really am.

Proust with his dratted madeleine
Roamed at leisure in the past
Some memories remain the same
Burnt on your soul, they are stuck fast.

One Easter, it was long ago
You took me to the Yorkshire dales
We walked and you were proud to show
The daffs that had survived the gales.

So as in solitude I lie
Reflecting on what might have been
I see you with your head held high
Walking past that lakeland stream...


(c) Poet in the woods 2014