I

In an Irish Pub, After a Funeral

It’s March. The earth is dirge-soft with daffodils. 

The rain goes through seven stages of grief.

When I was a girl, the first daffodils I ever planted 
died. I picked them and buried their yellow bodies in our yard. 

Now my heart shrinks, leaving the ache of a large seed. 
The sky sorrowful with weather.

We plant ourselves
in the pub she loved, dipping
our grief in beer.

The man at the bar is someone I recognize.
Someone I went on a date with once.

His hands shriveled around my waist. I shrunk 
back in the earth. Turning white with winter. Until he sparrowed away. 

Now another season dies.
The bar a sepulcher, faces shimmering

bulbs, swollen with tears, worms working
their way towards a communal end. 

Outside larks nest together. The wasp dies
inside its hanging garden grave.

I become bulb without bud, my eyes closing,
wet to sunlight.

Across the bar the man from the terrible date resurrects himself
from the mud-slick stool.

I track myself like a season. How many flowerings left. How many seeds. 
The skin turns yellow with wondering.

Time to make amends with the earth and what it offers.

I lift my glass, open casket catching the light 
of the half-empty moon.

***

Photo by Warner on Unsplash

Tresha Faye Haefner

Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, The Cincinnati Review, Hunger Mountain, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle and TinderBox. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012 nomination for a Pushcart.