The Lilies

How you came on the bright afternoon of wind and sun

with your arms full of lilies and a box of eggs, and we sat in the garden at the table with the cloth made by our great aunt, and drank tea, ate scones, and talked of how an object becomes sacred; as does a space, made special by the laying out of cloth and flowers; of how a nest placed in a woman’s hands can heal her; how new songs are being made for births and deaths and celebrations; how metal from the spindle of a loom in a cotton mill can be hammered flat, transformed into the circles of a necklace. You’re here for an hour, and our lives are suddenly fresh, alive to possibility,

opening up like the petals of the lilies overnight.

From “Lightkeepers” (2016) by kind permission of Wayleave Press.

© The estate of Elizabeth Burns.