Daffodils in Snow

What inspires the seeds to grow?
I ask myself
in the last quiet week of winter.

Time stands like a gate
before a wild garden.
Across the northern hemisphere
spring begins its slow return.

A daughter returning.
A mother stirring green life
back into the earth.
The Empress rising
among wheat and flowing water.

And here, on an unusually cold morning,
I see it.

Daffodils,
sun-coloured,
half buried in snow.

I step outside,
to take a closer look.

Their golden crowns bowed,
petals catching falling snowflakes.
Winter drapes a white shawl
across their shoulders.

Beneath the fragile snow
their stems hold steady.
Life pressing upward
through lingering cold.

Root by patient root,
the earth awakens.

I reach for warmth
as the daffodils do,
beneath the snow,
already rising
toward the sun.