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Poetry

With a rootless lily held in front of him

Heidi Williamson

The winner of the 2019 Plough Prize, ‘With a rootless lily held in front of him’ is taken from Heidi Williamson’s 2020 Bloodaxe collection Return by Minor Road.

 

Like someone stepping slowly ahead

of an old-fashioned car, or the person tasked

with carrying the country’s Olympic flame,

he must hold the lily as he walks, sits, speaks, listens.

 

He holds it low, his arms relaxed,

accustomed to its movement.

The long stem reaches to his breastbone.

The lily’s pale skull barely moves as he moves.

Open and upright, the petals are stiff and fragile.

The yellowy-orange stamen is a risk.

Everyone knows it could stain you.

With each breath he inhales its scent,

each exhalation ghost-feeds it.

 

Each person he meets will ask

or choose deliberately not to ask.

Each person sees the lily first,

then perhaps the man.

 

Some wonder what the lily does

when he sleeps. Or what happens

when this stalk, as it surely must,

fades and withers. Some suspect him

of slyly replacing it to freshen its bloom.

Each person considers touching the petals.

 

There are those who think it distasteful

to bring the lily out into the open.

To them it’s like a begging bowl.

In many ways his lily is no different

to any lily of theirs. Though they’d never

say it aloud, a few have a terrible doubt

that he somehow deserves his.

 

Sometimes he allows his focus to shift

through its arch-backed petals.

Sometimes he forgets he still holds it.

 

 

 

Read Heidi’s interview with MONK journal on ‘Dunblane, poetry and grief’ here:

http://monk.gallery/interviews/heidi-williamson-dunblane-poetry/

Watch her interview with the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLzEJq8k1Rc

 

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