Edinburgh Eden
The day lily blooms,
But bluebells long ago, how,
How to forget them?
~ Phillip Whidden
Day lilies bloom, but bluebells long ago
Are what the man relives. The lilies die
The same day that they open. Petals grow
Their orangeness, their brilliant, spotted, spry
Insistence but it lasts a single day.
“Too obvious,” he thinks but then recalls
The bluebells in the graveyard on his way
To ecstasy. He climbs on broken walls
To find it there among the gravestone lanes
With nettles, also. Fearing rejection
He searches on and leaves internal stains.
Though brief, the thrusting thrill leaves perfection.
..The snake-like ram, Satanic, briefer than
….The bluebells and the lilies, make the man.