Orange Lilies and Country Schools

                  Old Fashioned Orange Lilies

Orange lilies line the ditch near my growing up farmhouse, 
a country school nearby, where a passel of Wilson kids 
studied their McGuffy readers during the 1920s.
After the one-room school bell grew silent, 
the wooden building moved out,
its playground plowed into fertile farmground,
old fashioned orange lilies still announce
the spot where rural youngsters 
once carried their dinner pails,
recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, 
once worried through Friday spelldowns,
once played One O’ Cat and Red Rover.
Did pioneers bring roots of these flowers with them,
their glow still marking long-ago country school days?