Consider the Lilies
In the last days we had agreed.
O, there would be tenderness.
Wildfires in the park, the ice
breaking and the songy whine
of breakage.
How I wanted then
to lie face down in the white sheets
and slip out from my body.
In a photo — y bryfedog – the Snowdon lily
tucked in the grey rock of the mountain.
Her green, fronding reach.
The force of starry openness.
Poems leant forwards, leant back
into the strain of things. I wept
like a caricature. I removed all question marks
from my devices.
You could wait years to see her bloom.
And all I wanted, then, was for her — bright flower –
to be nothing
but herself and there
as we lifted our selves up to the world
with burning beautiful faces.
With thanks to Bernadette McBride
Deryn Rees-Jones is a poet and a critic. Her recent books include Paula Rego: The Art of Story (Thames & Hudson, 2019), Erato (Seren, 2019) and Fires (Shoestring: 2019). She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Liverpool and is currently in residence at the Citeì internationale des arts, Paris.
Modron Magazine 