Whole bees dart into the lilies,
but the day is a blossom too.
The lilies are huge yellow hybrids,
mostly. The bees are drowning in luck.
I wonder if it even seems like work
bounding from anther to anther.
I wonder if there’s a wake
of pollen in the air, a thin
gold script to the hive
I can’t see? A low wind
navigates the leaves and slick stalks
of the lilies. Six petals apiece
flail outward, mouthlike and deep.

And either it’s just me,
or there’s something in the flowers,
the stamina shot forth
bright as flares, the yellow petals
ascending to pink, backbending
and rippling out paper thin,
almost maroon at the edges,
that looks like astonishment
scorched halfway to anger,
as if even the lilies can’t believe,
given winter in the bulb, the weight
and burn of ice, the long
blind watery climb to light,
a day is all they get.

“The Day Lilies” previously appeared in Prairie Schooner and Hunger Wide as Heaven

Max Garland’s newest book of poems is Into the Good World Again (Holy Cow Press 2023), where “In the Meantime” originally appeared. Other books include The Word We Used for It, winner of the Brittingham Poetry Prize, The Postal Confessions, winner of the Juniper Prize, and Hunger Wide as Heaven, winner of the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. He taught for many years at UW-Eau Claire, served as Writer-in-Residence for the City of Eau Claire, and is the former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin. Read more of his work on VolumeOne.org.