hauling kitchen garbage

in my Saturday ponytail

and my stretchiest pants

rain steady and cool and

a tricycle parked in my patch

of beloved lily-of-the-valley

calls me back to childhood

high-water overalls on my sandy

secret point, and the wind

off the lake tangles my hair

into knots that will make me

howl later but later doesn’t

mean a thing to the tiny bells of the

lilies or to the shady cedars, my

bare toes burrowing into cool water

I’ve been blogging a little more regularly lately, and I decided that I would use my photos on instagram as a jumping off point for my posts, and that I would go ahead and write some stress-free poetry or fiction starts — a way to do some writing for fun, to share, not to worry about publishing. I took this photo of the trike and the lily-of-the-valley this afternoon while taking the garbage out as a part of my frantic efforts to dig ourselves out of the detritus of one busy, stressful week after another. The end is in sight, summer vacation on the horizon, and the summer childhood memories were sweet and welcome. I remembered how those lilies popped up the first spring after we bought this house, how I took them as a happy sign of home.

I didn’t know I would write a poem when I opened this post, but I knew I wanted to write about that childhood memory and about the carefree feelings of summer. Right now we have one more stressful week, and then there’s this shining light at the end of the tunnel. I looked up lily-of-the-valley to give me inspiration for this poem, and I read that, in floriography, or the language of flowers, this flower signified a return of happiness, and that seemed to me a perfect message to send to the world right now.