Dear Lily of the Nile

Every region has its common landscape plants that sort of blur into the strip malls and parking lots of our errand-running lives. In my current Midwestern locale, it’s all about yellow day lilies, coneflowers, and ornamental grasses. Since I didn’t grow up here, I may take a little more notice of these plants compared to Illinois lifers, but even now, it’s easy to get caught up in my to-do lists and bypass the colors and textures in my path.

One of those plants from my childhood home of southern California was lily of the Nile. Like many SoCal flowers, lily of the Nile (Agapanthus), known as African Lily in the UK, is native to southern Africa. It’s also not a true lily. Trying to figure out what it actually is flung me into a botanical rabbit hole, but I can tell you this: they are 1’ to 4’ perennials with strappy leaves and showy umbels of trumpet-shaped flowers ranging from white to purple to blue.

And they really are showy, despite the fact that I never even knew what these things were called until I visited California a few years ago and realized I’d never taken the time to appreciate them. I’m sorry, Lily of the Nile, for ignoring you. Here is my love letter all the way from Zone 5, where, sadly, you cannot survive.

Dear Lily of the Nile

I saw but never saw you
groveling at the feet
of every suburban palm tree
I’d bike past on my way
to Thrifty or Hallmark,
aflutter with babysitting cash.

On Santa Ana windy days,
you’d fling your blue streaks
over whitewashed sidewalks
like reverse contrails,
so desperate for my attention
as I skidded around you

toward the next candy bar
or cute boy, now all melted
in memory. I wish I had noticed
how your flowers hang
in that space between
a firework’s pop and full bloom,

when massed in their umbels,
a full Independence Day
finale, hummingbirds stabbing
the sparks–too hot! too hot!
Unopened, each blossom
is a slow-motion rain drop;

fallen, a bag of gifts slung
over a lizard’s shoulder.
How you used to stick
to the bottom of my sandals
after a rare rainy day,
and I’d scrape you off on the curb!

Or, when you started to bud,
sprung off my bare legs
like handfuls of amethysts
you scattered in my path
as I evaded the day’s majesty
and hurried off to class.

Your Turn: Lily of the Nile or Other Flower Poetry Prompt

Now you try. Is there a common plant or other object you seemed to just “pass by” when you were growing up? Write a poem to it today, appreciating the beauty and wonder you may have missed.

Photo by Maja Dumat, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Tania Runyan.

“Runyan is as kind as she is funny, and she excels at self-deprecating humor, the best kind.”

—Glynn Young, author and reviewer

• Author
• Recent Posts

Tania Runyan

Tania Runyan lives in Lindenhurst, Illinois, a sort-of suburb, sort-of small town, where the deer and the minivans play. She's a 2011 NEA fellow and mama to four poetry books—A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, Delicious Air, and What Will Soon Take Place—and three (much cuter and noisier) human children. Tania is also the author of five non-fiction books—Making Peace with Paradise, How To Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, How to Write a Form Poem, and How to Write a College Application Essay. Visit her at TaniaRunyan.com

Latest posts by Tania Runyan (see all)

• Flowers of California: California Poppy - December 8, 2022
• Flowers of California: Lily of the Nile - October 13, 2022
• Flowers of California: Crape Myrtle - October 5, 2022