The Day Lily
by Betty Conway
Luke 12:27: Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
She’s no violet, pressing her velvety softness shyly against a spring-warmed boulder.
Nor is she a climbing rose, tumbling over the grey fences of summer in a pink waterfall.
She is a lily—
Common, hardy, often forgotten—
Bordering the yards of abandoned home places,
Spilling over into the fields in a ragged line,
An escapee, dancing jubilantly with the wild daisies.
Littering roadside ditches with slivers of orange sunshine,
No mowing machine can keep her down.
Knobby, gnarly, woody-brown bulbs
Holding the earth together
On hillsides too steep to plow,
Green stems pushing through rocks and dirt
Too poor to grow beans, or corn, or tomatoes.
Unacknowledged and undeterred,
She shoots straight
Up into the sky
Her own glowing star.
