When Lilies Close
Then Open Their Face
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow—
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it’s pleasure through—
Emily
Dickinson
(F
754)
to burn off.
Depending
on if they’re water
-logged or, on the other end
of it, heat shocked.
Depending on being
seen by no one and going
about it anyway. Don’t
you
like knowing though
that lilies, some of them,
close their throats
come after supper when
the dishes are done up
and there’s still
a bit of sitting you can
get in? And where you
can
watch the wild want
come up and swing
and sway like a Grange
dance and get on
to decay like it was
the only true possible way?
Maybe too taking in
the plot of land can make you
walk so slow enough
it’s an honest
to goodness
limp to your own
mother’s death
bed and if it’s the proper season
you’ll carry some plucked
and cut slant wise blossom
of some sort and you’ll’ve
slipped it just so just
right enough smart
for the bottle on
the bed-stand, bottle
you found out hoeing
and harrowing and planting
up the land with her
years and years gone on
now, you’ll see again
how it just popped
up out of the ground
just like that
just like it were
a buoy in the water
or a bobber brought
under by the mouth
and the hooked
lip of a trout
and you took it
into the fist of your
grip and the both
of you grinned at
being such armchair
archaeologists. You
must’ve felt its age
and wondered back
at the way men
came and went
in and out of the house
and threw down
their lives when they were
hollowed out, like
they were meant
to be buried all along
and with all their secrets
beneath the sod
God knows how long
but being delivered now
it’s been sitting all this time
an open mouth
a little clutch
of lily at its lip
and fragrant! tell me
can’t you pull in all that
the air and hold it
close, and smile
at the coming on
the burning off of such
an aromatic fog?
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