Week #7 Entry #3 critical

Genus Narcissus

Faire daffadills, we weep to see / You haste away so soone.
—Herrick

The road I walked home from school
was dense with trees and shadow, creek-side,
and lit by yellow daffodils, early blossoms

bright against winter’s last gray days.
I must have known they grew wild, thought
no harm in taking them. So I did—

gathering up as many as I could hold,
then presenting them, in a jar, to my mother.
She put them on the sill, and I sat nearby,

watching light bend through the glass,
day easing into evening, proud of myself
for giving my mother some small thing.

Childish vanity. I must have seen in them
some measure of myself—the slender
stems, each blossom a head lifted up

toward praise, or bowed to meet its reflection.
Walking home those years ago, I knew nothing
of Narcissus or the daffodils’ short spring—

how they’d dry like graveside flowers, rustling
when the wind blew—a whisper, treacherous,
from the sill. Be taken with yourself,

they said to me; Die early, to my mother.

I read this poem in my 1102 class, I really enjoyed it. If your know about Greek mythology, then you know how daffodils came about. Narcissus was so intrigued with himself that he looked at himself in a pond and stayed in that one spot forever. when he died a flower grew in his spot. in this poem the little girl pick these flowers because she see herself in it. "must have seen in them some measure of myself—the slender

stems, each blossom a head lifted up." The same goes for the mother. She views herself in these flowers, but just Daffodils are also short lived plants, so she sees her death quickly approaching. I like this poem because it ties in so nicely with the rest of the collection. The next poem in the book is called graveyard where her mother has died and we see the narrator in the first stage of grief.