Corn Lily Cure

 

Surprised by saffron stems,

showing on my stoop with a smile.

In hands of a handsome devil,

really they're lilies,

Do you know where this story begins or ends?

I’ll backtrack for you.

I wrote a text message haiku:

Wild lilies breathe ~ in Yosemite for you ~ open your hands wide.

Flowers John Muir carefully documented,
the full measure of the mountain runs your lungs;
but I didn’t that send that one,
the stamens felt sappy,
with staining crumbs.

Delete delete.

Silent, death destructiion disaster of a heart.

No-one wants to hear about chemotherapy.

Delete delete.

I sent something else:

Crane Flat corn lilies ~ burn upon my memory ~ enjoy your sweet XXXX.

(Keep secrets locked in a jewelry box made by some child in China)

Back track more:

A girl walked through those sequoias in Crane Flat. A funny teen with a sketch book alone drawing flowers and scribbling journal notes in the woods. A watercolor of those corn lilies from this trip is  in my Mother’s downstairs bath. I read that the Cyclopamine in corn lilies once thought to be so poisonous to humans and livestock, actually has life-saving properties. Think of the ranchers who had this scourge pulled and burned at the stake. The corn lily native plant is now being used in advanced cancer trials. The healing aspect of miracles are around us in everyday dandelions you fail to see in the cracks of concrete.

Go fast forward and dance with your shoulders in a figure eight:

If you remove the stamens the lilies last longer, the gold dust won’t mark you like some penance on Ash Wednesday.

"For dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

Delete delete.

Perhaps it is better not explaining my haiku or saving the plate of saffron pollen as some science experiment.

Allow me to dye your gown the color of the sun.

Send.