Always, in June, there were two or three tiger lilies in bloom, in the grassy glade to which no path led, in the woods beyond the barnyard. I like to believe no one knew of their existence save me, and maybe I was right, but the hubris of a ten-year-old, that confidence that soars before adolescence sets in, can be inflated. Few flowers bloomed here, and so these lilies took on mythical proportion beside the plebian Scotch broom, the dandelion. Their light seemed to not just glow but to also breathe its own air. And I breathed the same air, for the week or two that they sent forth their dusty pollen into the second-growth forest, in the shadow of alders and big-leaf maples. I imagined myself a fawn, invisible and unknown in the larger world, safe in my thicket, in the rampant growth of fiddlehead ferns at the edge of the universe.
A secret flower? I like that! I too recently found one that I reluctantly left in situ to set seed. When I returned to recuperate the seeds, it had gone. I hadn't been alone!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to have known you as a child, T.Clear.
ReplyDeleteThis is so evocative I can smell the forest, inhale the lilies' pollen, see the fiddlehead ferns at the edge of your universe. Thank you for awakening some of my own ten-years-old memories. L, C
yes, i too had a"thing" for tiger lilies as a child. i remember sitting on the granite step of my grandmother's house, admiring the tiger lilies.
ReplyDeletei am sure i liked the name as much as the actual flower!
"I imagined myself a fawn..."
ReplyDeleteSo lovely. Thank you, T.
Claire, we would've roamed the woods together in search of bird's nests.
ReplyDelete