The Garden

Most of the poem takes place in the speaker's garden as she plants 15 white lilies and waits for them to bloom. Garden poetry is a long and rich tradition in which possibilities for hope and regeneration are abundant. Cultivated landscapes require time and care, and the speaker in "The Lilies" patiently waits to see the blooms emerge from her labors. The garden also reflects the state of the speaker's health as she undergoes treatment for oral cancer. In winter, when the bare earth shows "rhizomes shrunken / below the frost line," the speaker endures biopsies and laser incisions on her tongue (10-11). In later summers, the speaker describes the "serpentine length" of both her scar and the blooming garden, showing the capacity for healing and renewal (17).

The Speaker's Body

Particularly in the second half of the poem, the speaker explicitly turns her focus inward. Garden imagery overlaps with...