The Speaker

The unnamed first-person speaker in the poem uses natural imagery to describe her experience with oral cancer. After learning of her possible diagnosis, she decides to plant 15 white lilies in her garden. The fact that the speaker is aware that the flowers will take a year to bloom demonstrates her will and hope for survival. This is a patient speaker; she is able to wait to see what time will unfold both in terms of the flowers and her illness. As time passes, the language used to describe the lilies reflects the speaker's own state of health. For example, while the cancer on the speaker's tongue becomes a "sprawling mass," the bare winter earth outside shows "rhizomes shrunken / below the frost line" (9 and 10-11). The lilies bloom in all their glory, returning in later years and tripling in number, and the speaker implies her own healing through...