Floriography of a Birth

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.

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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.