Plucked (for my brother Tim), Antony Johae

After springs absent from England
these daffodils planted on verges and embankments
by boroughs determined on colour
strike home from traveller’s coach window.

They ring early bells, lean like expectant crowds,
sun-yellow in the Essex easterly.

One thinks of William wandering with Dorothy,
daffodils dancing in lakeside breeze to nature’s ways,
pensive poet’s recall in creative solitude.

We drove, my brother and I, along Remembrance Avenue
one day this spring, saw dear daffodils
flat, lying the the roadside
plucked.