In a weathered flower pot, its dark green glaze

inscribed with abstractions, are four snowdrops,

carefully planted like the four points

of a weather vane, their blooms, as yet

still tight, unopened, like paper lanterns

on long curving poles – as if in the lush heat

and humidity of some miniature,

ornamental, oriental garden

replete with palm fronds, and liana,

and distant gongs. In an easterly wind –

that has been blowing for days from the tundras

of Siberia, over the vast lowlands

of the European Plain, and the grim

North Sea, across the moorlands of the Peaks,

and the clayey fields of the Cheshire Gap –

they are trembling slightly.