Where white houses used to be
There are still Tiger Lilies in clumps
Where the path to the front door was.
There are four tires per car speeding by
Thirty-four cars per hour, in a century
That’s one hundred seventeen thousand tires
Their diameters grow smaller over time.
Rusty Armco barriers line the old ditches
They are broken from many near misses
Of drivers distracted by flowers or something
But let’s assume it was the flowers
Tiger Lilies can live to be hundreds of years old
The round bulbs just centimeters under the ground
And tolerant of volatile chemicals and rust
And the black rubber common near roads.
They are poisonous to cats
Their nodding tepals feed bulbils
That spread aggressively
and grow larger over time.