One daylily bud
remains unbloomed. The two
months' pageant
of haughty scarlet and gold, modest
peach, plain
ivory trimmed in dusky purple,
dwindled into June’s distance,
leaving
skeletal stems in full
skirts touched with yellow,
too heavy for dancing.
Autumn’s blooms
hide in their corners like
stubborn
children who refuse to dress up
and make a show for Grandma, while
the trees
cling to tired green, lacking energy
to change to their party
clothes.
You also
have given it up and gone
away to play for a while, to sleep
somewhere else, where heat
is expected, and nobody misses
hurrying. But I am still here.
I’ve settled for the clink
of ice in the glass, the slow
turning of a page, the familiar groove
of radio and TV. I’m content
to pump up the AC and wait for
the latecomer, moving by some
tempo of its own, responding
to a later hour, a different
angle of the sun, to unfold its
leaves, to let
six golden petals as lacy
and delicate as the rose’s open
finally in solitary
glory on an August morning,
in the lazy time, when nothing
new can begin.
Liz Huck
