The long, slender shoots of Surprise Lilies
rise up from roots hidden beneath the earth.
A sudden birth of stems
that seem to sprout up full-grown.
Standing two feet tall in two days’ growth,
smooth tubes that spread tender trumpets of color
in two more days.

I love the way they appear from bare dirt
in the planter or from sod along the roadside
or in the lawn of an abandoned house.
Springing up from hidden bulbs
after the spring growth has died and faded:
a thick cluster of low blades thriving for a while
and then passing on in plain green barrenness.

And yet…
erupting in glorious pastels 
in the hottest part of summer.

They were blooming in July of 2009
when my wife and I 
were building my father’s casket
in the garage.
Each day we walked past their beauty
in our sad but willing duty
of honoring him with wood and satin,
a small shrine to ninety-five years of life.

Each year now
when the heat and glare of summer sun
coax out the sudden emergence of Surprise Lilies,
I think of him and his being laid to rest
in an oak box lined with smooth fabric,
his head pillowed for sleep in the keeping
of another Carpenter’s own holy hands.

Resting from his life of labors,
of dark dairy mornings,
of building houses, barns, and churches,
of working dirt from the time he was a kid,
raising hay, tobacco, and children,
seventy-six years of preaching,
and nearly that many of marriage.

An end of many days made to seem only a few,
like the sudden blooming of plants
that appear and disappear like sighs on a summer evening,
like August dew in the shrinking shade of an old spruce tree.

H. Arnett
8/11/25