Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- The Commute
- Warming
- Walking Home
- Cycling the Island
- The Garden
- Swallow Hole
- Sylvia Plath's House
- Sixteen Acres
- The Trap
- Praise Song
- View of a Badger on the Heights Road
- The Meaning of Birds
- The Ghost of a Flea
- Nest
- Twinned Sonnets
- Counting the Pennies
- Swan Upping
- The Frozen River
- Marsh Lily
- Praise Song
- To a Dandelion
- Moths
- Sestina for Rain
- A Perfect Mirror
- The Unicorn
- Praise Song
- Relics
- Getting Lost
- Woods in Snow
- Moon Walk
- Halfway Back
- New Moon
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
To a Dandelion
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- The Commute
- Warming
- Walking Home
- Cycling the Island
- The Garden
- Swallow Hole
- Sylvia Plath's House
- Sixteen Acres
- The Trap
- Praise Song
- View of a Badger on the Heights Road
- The Meaning of Birds
- The Ghost of a Flea
- Nest
- Twinned Sonnets
- Counting the Pennies
- Swan Upping
- The Frozen River
- Marsh Lily
- Praise Song
- To a Dandelion
- Moths
- Sestina for Rain
- A Perfect Mirror
- The Unicorn
- Praise Song
- Relics
- Getting Lost
- Woods in Snow
- Moon Walk
- Halfway Back
- New Moon
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
Summary
I will not, I will not pull you up, cockof-
the-beds among the last of the tulips,
the narcissi like used up tea-bags,
the breaking blue of forget-me-nots.
A purple admiral with one torn wing
unfolds its proboscis and dips-dips-deep
into petals of dense bright birds’ tongues,
butter yellow, singing your colour,
your field-full of sunflowers.
Who else does this – metamorphosis?
Just now a bullfinch sipping up your seed,
his blush halting my conversation.
Feather-head, fuzz-ball, blow-in-the-wind.
I see through shards of the cerebellum
as each hour scatters – a tender, ripped shining.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Perfect Mirror , pp. 28Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018