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.