Lilies Poem by Patti Masterman

Under the arc of days, he set her free in time,
He gave her up to the whimsy of wind,
The ghostly waves of the Sun's heated ethers.
The hours of their togetherness came unraveled,
Came apart at the seams, at the mended parts first,
Though he never sought to repair the tear
Or to comfort the newly opened hole's emptiness-
It was all too hopeless.

And why take you thought for raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field,
How they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

But instead, he wound it around himself,
Purposely made plans to remove himself, like a spot rubbed out,
Like a runner in a pair of hose, allowed to consume an entire leg,
Until the wearer must certainly abandon it, or else gather up the tatters
Knowing not what to do with them, or how to reweave the mess,
Or worse, continue wearing it, to the obvious surprise of all encountered,
Either pretending not to know, or pretending to wait for a private moment to remove the defective stockings. So, in this fashion,
He would remove her from his life; in effigy, he would cut her from all its pictures,
All the memories he had made with her, he was now determined to forget.

And why take you thought for raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field,
How they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

Nobody could put the news back in the can, repair the injury.
And it was a public game, this necessary total forgetting and giving up.
Maybe others couldn’t understand, but it didn't matter
He stared at the headstone flanked by Lilies for a couple more minutes, and then turned,
Walking slowly down the flagstone sidewalk to the parking lot.
There weren’t a lot of mourners; they had only been living here for a few months;
No time to acquire new friends and even less the casual acquaintances,
The ones who always seem to manage to make it to funerals
For whatever reasons they might have.
They had taken the banks of Lilies surrounding the casket and arranged them,
Quite artfully, around the stone and opened grave.

And why take you thought for raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field,
How they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

The baking car seemed more silent than ever, as it quietly came alive, purring softly.
He pulled out of the cemetery parking area, deliberately not glancing behind him again.
He rounded a few roads, curving sedately around the low mountains,
Marveling at how clear it had become, though earlier it looked angry and unsettled.
He rolled the car windows down, as if to banish, remove the scent left behind.
Though once you have smelled death, been touched personally by it,
Everything else becomes a farce, a denial of what you have already seen
With your own eyes, and felt breathing too close by to ever forget it.
Every day becomes another refusal to continue dying, even if it's the only game left in town.
He laughed a nasty, rumbly sort of laugh, resolved to seek out that little bar,
The one at the edge of town, where he had met her, so many ages ago-
Perhaps luck would favor him twice there, it could happen..
The sun meanwhile filled the windows with tiny prisms and reflections;
All the bright objects going by flashed a microscopic brilliance into the car
That he had never noticed before, as if they wished to touch him even in a minute fashion.
And as he was desperate, desperate for any kind of omen,
He decided these sudden, unexpected illuminations would have to be it.
He could pretend to go on living for a while, till everyone had forgotten about it.
His mother had always told him to keep his business private,
Not become a joke, not lose the respect of others;
Familiarity breeds contempt, and all that.
And when people ask how you are doing, they don't really want or need to know the details.
He thought of the small pale and solemn face, ringed by dark hair, with dirt beginning to pile up above it, the hidden form broken and camouflaged
Above the creamy blue satin lining and the strange high gloss wood.
And only a single tiny muscle twitched, just below his lower lip.
In time, he would learn to control even that.

And why take you thought for raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field,
How they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

He had always suspected god merely created man
So that he would have some entertainment, something lower than god
A pathetic thing needed for laughing at,
When even being god got to be too much of a bore.
Ah, if the real heaven-and-earth creating god had only to drink from man's cup once,
Things must surely change. The religions really had it all backward.
He fired up the radio and firmly blanked his mind.
He needed to hold on to that ability to forget everything and stop all thinking;
After all, he could still live a useful life.
There were people who still needed him, even if she no longer did.
A sob escaped and made it's way to the top of his throat, but he swallowed it down quickly,
As if thwarting a hiccup. Death is only a hiccup that comes at the wrong time,
He repeated to himself, realizing his mind-clearing trick had failed him.
Memory was only a crutch used to keep the living in the past, and thought was it’s transportation.
This too shall pass, he whispered. The aphorisms piled up, began to tilt sideways,
Threatening to fall over, to obscure all the light left in the stiff, unwieldy light-dying world.
Never again, as long as he lived, would he have another white Lily anywhere near,
Or in any house or room or yard he ever spent any time in.
That was the only sacrifice he dared to make for this day.
If you give up, if you give in, they've got you by the balls then.
He had seen people who were slave to their emotions, and they were cripples.
As if this idea bothered him particularly,
He glanced into his own eyes in the rearview mirror,
And for the first time, he saw something unrecognizable there,
Saw a person he felt he had nothing in common with any longer.
He didn't want to put words to the things now being etched onto that face.
It was going to take a lot of years to erase that pain; a lot of drinking alone,
A lot of being cold and unfeeling and relentlessly alive.
And at the end of it, if he was lucky, he would live;
Not just become another animated corpse, himself,
Though it was still, he decided, much too early to believe in a future just yet.

And why take you thought for raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field,
How they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you,
That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

-Matthew 6: 28,29, American King James Version