Fireball Lily, B.Hatfield

Fireball Lily
By Brad Hatfield

I sit in the garden of the Baccarat resort,
with an untouched drink, writing a report.
I see no contradiction, nothing athwart,
in the lily’s beauty and lethal sangfroid;
bright orange bursts cunningly deployed
on a solitary stem--and poison alkaloid
surging in its veins. Pygmies in Cameroon
mix this flower to tip crude harpoons
and fell young bucks in the shade at noon.