Spider Lilies (Higanbana*)

And now that the rice fields have been shorn of their treasure of golden seeds, and are reduced to a stubbly beige corduroyed with straight rows of stalk-spikes, with all about to fall into the slowing cold of autumn and thence to the ice of winter, just in the nick of time pops up into the morning the bright red sparkling gems on long green stalks that are the spider lilies, clusters of them rising like hope itself reborn from the culled earth, freshly daring from the verge to bring us the crimson message that there is courage always in the land, there is brightness yet in the dark and warmth in the cold, there is sustenance yet beyond sight, as here to see; and if this is so for the likes of the wisps of these frail clouds unfolding, then how much for the likes of folk as sturdy as we, and so the verge of one more autumn is crossed in beauty

* Higan (Buddhist term for the week around equinox) + hana (flower); Lycoris radiata.