The sun circles the dial,

Like some ophidian morning glory

Twining its way

Around a woman’s ankle –

Unshaved and unsunned,

Naively unsuspecting.

Already the crocus has withered.

First world swallowed by second world

In the cresting wave.

Out of the night terror darkness

Climbs the hollow green shoot

Of the paperwhite.

Dante holds Beatrice

In his mind’s eye only,

A radiance twice reflected

And half held.

And the sunflower wants – 

What?

To find what it follows,

To hold more than can be grasped

By wanting?

You could ask Freud, Wordsworth, or Mary Oliver –

But better to start, I think, 

with a well practiced horticulturist.