The poem
I have been thinking about living like the lilies that blow in the fields.
They rise and fall in the edge of the wind, and have no shelter from the tongues of the cattle,
and have no closets or cupboards, and have no legs. Still I would like to be as wonderful
as the old idea. But if I were a lily I think I would wait all day for the green face
of the hummingbird to touch me. What I mean is, could I forget myself
even in those feathery fields? When Van Gogh preached to the poor of coarse he wanted to save someone--
most of all himself. He wasn't a lily, and wandering through the bright fields only gave him more ideas
it would take his life to solve. I think I will always be lonely in this world, where the cattle graze like a black and white river--
where the vanishing lilies melt, without protest, on their tongues-- where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss, just rises and floats away.
This poem reminded me of the things in the New Testament book of Matthew where Jesus said, "Consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor work. Yet they are dressed even finer than King Solomon was."
It was a good feeling to think about being as carefree as the lilies, and even about what she said about death and being mourned on a slow, rainy day.