A daffodil from Emily’s lot
I lay beside her headstone
on the first day of May.
I brought
another with me, threaded
through my buttonhole, the spawn
of ancestor she planted
where, today,
I trod her lawn. 
  A yellow small decanter 
of her perfume, hermit-wild 
and without a stopper,
next to her stone I filed
to give her back her property—
it’s well it cannot spill.
Lolling on my jacket,
Emily’s other daffodil.

  Now, rocking to the racket 
of the train, I try 
recalling all her parlor’s
penetration of my eye,
remembering mainly spartan
sunlight through the dimity
of the window-bay, evoking
her white-dressed anonymity.
  I remember, as if spoken
in my head: “I’m
nobody! Who
are you?”
thinking 
how liked by time
she still is. It has linked
the hemlocks closer in their
hedge so that her privacy
remains. A denser lair,
in fact, than when she was alive
and looked through that bay
on the long garden
where I looked today.