Lilium, by Rebecca Weigold

The Flower Seller, by George Jakobides (Greece), 1900.

Lilium

The orphan hears her mother
call from the fields of Hellas,
and meets her where blossoms of red silk
Turk's Cap curl back on their stems,
acres of glorious suns blooming
against the Mediterranean sky. 
For a moment,
she feels her mother's petal-soft olive skin,
smells the floral scent of her Grecian curls.
In the city she sells crocus
and grape hyacinth, enough 
to pay for bread and figs.
Lilies would earn her pomegranates,
but she would rather
her stomach and basket be wanting
and know where her mother waits.

Rebecca Weigold

Rebecca Weigold's poems are forthcoming or have appeared in BlazeVOX, The Tishman Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Winamop, The Skinny Poetry Journal, and others.  In 1987, she founded and published The Cincinnati Poets' Collective, which featured the work of national and international poets for nearly a decade.  Her writer's page can be found on Facebook at Rebecca Weigold--Poet.