Once upon a time
in the village of Stara
Zagora, Mikhail Drogzenovich,

Sheet-monger, blanket-hoarder,
wool gatherer of nightmares,
wrapped in white linen like a corpse,

Sun guzzles quick down August’s throat.

Je fais ce que je peux.
Which is to say, midwinter
and poems are as difficult as flowers.

Nature must prick us with her courages also. —Vita Sackville-West

Mad March dreams
of crane flowers,
birds of paradise.
Strelitzia reginae a deft cut
of bird and flower.

Each day the light diminishes earlier. Colors at dusk are softer with an
opulence they lack under full sun. My eyes strain with the beautiful, painful
squint. My wax flowers, my painter’s palette—a floral encaustic! The papery
papavers are waxy in the frigid morning air, but by noon I can see my fingers
through them, fluttering, a swim of color, red under red.

The wide sweep of today.
Books, flowers, and poetry. Woolgathering and trees.
The wood garden is fervor, a blaze of primula and anemone.
The poplar is passion, viola-resonant, my vibrating footfall.

Busy Lizzie. Wink and blink. Touch-me-not. Impatiens, as ever, a virtue my
dear! Enough of this love your perennials and they will love you back threefold
and several seasons. If you don’t like it, pull it out!

Midges and tetchiness.
A constantly muddy mood.

In my impatience for mail it strikes me that the perianth is a floral envelope
—a cloak concealing the reproductive organs . . .

Peak gust and west of July.