What is it about the orange daylily that makes me want to pull over my car and bow? That same ineffable quality that compelled people to hide tubers in their bags and lug them across oceans; to eat the blossoms with garlic, ginger, peanuts, sumac or stuffed with goat cheese and fried with thyme; to inadvertently smirk at the crowd of alluring golden apples, highway saffron, each flower elbowing for sun by a creaky gate, you know which I mean, the one that always leads to something new.
Today the road mowers sliced the shivering stems and blooms like lobbed candlesticks, littering the ditches with sunsets.
Seems like we didn’t have this many when I was a kid, let alone last year. Ever hear of the lily pad problem?—ponds half covered in green discs, yawning men prodding with sticks, ripples still reflecting in their pupils as they jolt awake the very next day, realizing they are too late.
Daylilies are not related lily pads, but everything is lily pads.
It must be the same for Hemerocallis fulva, lurid and gravel dust-coated siren. Two buds become four. Four become eight. How long before the hills and streets are like ripe papaya, before I, too, am daylily? What dragonfly will worship and seduce, and, anyway, aren’t they the same thing? Do you remember there was a pond here once? When will the mowers come?
A wonderful book with an entry on daylilies or day lilies or day-lilies, whichever you prefer
A video that is as informative as you want it to be
A poem about daylilies that is much better than mine
