Daisies for innocence, roses for love—everyone speaks a little flower, lexicon of forebears. Dahlias for dignity, rosemary for remembrance: at birth, my daughter is a bud on the Flower of Life. Not ill but daffodil, born under summer’s golden moon. I bargained for her! Anything, I whispered. Hardship. Illness— I said it, I said it on my knees in the garden, leaves falling as I dug past light. Daffodils for new beginnings. I planted them everywhere. Anemone: fragility. Did I buy the wrong bulbs? What grew.
Lisa C. Krueger is a poet and psychologist in Los Angeles. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Barrow Street Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and others. Red Hen Press has published four collections of her poetry, most recently, Run Away to the Yard, in 2017.
**We do our best to preserve the integrity of each poem; however, due to programming limitations, some poems may read differently on a mobile phone and in certain browsers. For best viewing, use Chrome on a desktop/laptop.