How I feel about My Lost Hour

Daylight Savings Begins


I am tired, the queen
of simple math: the clock reads seven,
so it must be six.
It is dark, morning-dark, but the killdeer
circle the neighborhood, their high-
pitched call waking the ones who are still
dreaming, still in winter pajamas, flannel
sheets.
Forget the tulips,
the already-bloomed and dying crocuses,
any bulb that has to be first
for spring. Their fields are wasted on the early
risers, determined and prompt.
Give me the dawdlers, sunflowers
and dahlias of fall, let me have my hour
back, my down-comforter a few more
weeks. Return my frost-dipped mornings
where the only things awake are breastfed,
streetlights, a quiet sky.


-Kelli Russell Agodon