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.
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By David Selzer