Tiger lilies everywhere <br />mark highway margins, <br />smudging rocky crags <br />with wild, petalled fire. <br /> <br />They spread through moving fields, <br />waving lazily with <br />the goldenrod and <br />the fringed blue aster. <br />There’s something arresting <br />in the way they move, <br />something charming <br />in the common nature <br />of their grace. <br /> <br />Orange day lilies, <br />flora in the ditch, <br />lets the dead <br />all around them, <br />come back to life, <br />Lazarus flowers <br />breathing deeply and proudly, <br />under an unforgiving <br />July sun. <br /> <br />Cultured to smell roses <br />and instructed to fawn <br />over the pristine sister-orchid, <br />I shyly admire them <br />and their savage comeliness, <br />coveting that which would <br />surely seem unbefitting <br />behind closed doors. <br /> <br />Desperate to ease the ache <br />to pluck and snatch them <br />from the soil in which <br />they thrive, I look away, <br />thinking it wise and <br />believing myself humane. <br /> <br />I dismiss them <br />and their simple beauty <br />knowing it is easier to leave them, <br />than to watch them die <br />in the indulgence of <br />unwilling captivity. <br /> <br />To prop them up, <br />in a yawning, white <br />porcelain vase, <br />free from those elements <br />and the wrath of the seasons, <br />will only help them to <br />wither and vanish, <br />roaring softly <br />as they go. <br /> <br />The vase rests empty, <br />and the day goes on.<br /><br />Tara Teeling<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tiger-lily-2/
