Essential

You go outside before work
and find impossibly neon green shoots,
baby Emerald Cities in the muck:
sweet promises
of open-faced daffodils who
will bob and sway in weeks to come.
A violent surge of crocuses has happened,
the ones that lived here long before you did,
that lay dormant under winter soil,
ticking with eventual heartbeats
racing for air in February,
gasping in the cold morning sun.
Camellia buds are here, too,
baby pink iced gems
fit to burst and make confetti on the floor.
You think about all the seed packets
yet to shake,
and the way the sun felt on your face last week,
warming every bit of your soul,
something so essential but
somehow
in the gloam of winter,
you'd forgotten that you needed it.