Day Lilies

For six days, full-throated, they praised

the light with speckled tongues and blare

        of silence by the porch stair:

honor guard with blazons and trumpets raised

still heralding the steps of those

        who have not for years walked here

        but who once, pausing, chose

this slope for a throng of lilies:

and hacked with mattock, pitching stones

        and clods aside to tamp dense

clumps of bog-soil for new roots to seize.

So lilies tongued the brassy air

        and cast it back in the sun's

        wide hearing. So, the pair

who planted the bulbs stood and heard

that clarion silence. We've heard it,

        standing here toward sunset

as those gaping, burnished corollas poured

their flourish. But the petals have

        shrivelled, from each crumpled knot

        droops a tangle of rough

notes shrunk to a caul of music.

Extend your palms: you could as well

        cup sunbeams as pour brim-full

again those absent flowers, or touch the quick

arms of those who bent here, trowel in

        hand, and scraped and sifted soil

        held in a bed of stone.