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Tiger Lilies |
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An island of long-necked tiger lilies inspired this poem, but drafts evolved from a literal description of flowers to a reflection on our ability — lilies, insects, humans — to “live on fire / unnoticed.”
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I wrote this for the man I love on the first morning of my writing residency in Moose Lake, MN.
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I believe, like Lucille Clifton, that “poetry doesn’t have to be fact, it only has to be true.” Yet this moment came to me pretty much as I describe. Gifts enter our lives, gifts depart. I had to write about this one.
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People still like poems that rhyme – myself included! This is from How Still the Riddle, a collection of rhyming poems beautifully illustrated by my late sister, Gale Tolf.
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| "Connecting the Stars" took years to write, because I thought for years that the painting in the poem ("The White Horse," which hangs in the Art Institute in Chicago) was its focus. I finally figured out that the poem was about something larger, less definable, more fragile. |
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