Daylilies

I remember them, a lifetime back,
Fanta orange, the way they grew
Feral by the railroad track,
Abundance in abandon, swarms
On the embankment, gravelled, steep.
I’d pick some for a vase, or two,
Back then, when I held beauty cheap,
There for the taking, in your arms.

Each afternoon was thunderstorms,
High dudgeon in the crowns of oak
And umbraged clouds, lightning would drop,
And then a hundred dishes broke.
And just as quickly, it would stop,
A dripping peace, the sodden worms,
Birdsong in the treble wires,
The clouds cerise with under-fires.

Is memory a kind of praise?
Each day the same storm would unfold,
And in post-thunder afternoons,
The after-light was syrup-gold,
As one by one, the flowers scrolled
Shut, like jaundiced silk cocoons,
And some plunked on the tabletop,
Those days ephemeral as days.