White Lilies

White lilies symbolize the speaker's hope for survival and her body's dual capacity to grow cancer cells and to heal. In the wider culture, these flowers are associated with Easter, and the symbolism for rebirth and renewal is relevant in the poem. As time passes, the lilies' physical state reflects the changes in the speaker's body as a result of cancer.

The Earth

The earth symbolizes the speaker's own body as each passes through the changing seasons. In winter, for example, the bare earth shows "rhizomes shrunken / below the frost line" while the "sprawling mass" of cancer on the speaker's tongue undergoes treatment (9 and 10-11). In later summers, the speaker describes the blooming lilies in their full glory, but simultaneously considers what could grow in the "black / and unforgiving" darkness of her own throat (presented as an unseeable subterranean world).

Serpents

Serpents symbolize healing and...