So much depended on it, your spinning
straw into gold, finding the right words in
the right places, riding on high alert,
struggling to grow the flowers that might create
light and loveliness for a thirsty world –
then you found these two blooms the river made
from silt, leaves and tangled grass, swept and held
on dried, spent stems by the flood-wrecked edge:
alluvium flowers, tattered and scentless
and infinitely intricate, the yes
to all your buried, wilful nos, and you saw
how real beauty happens on its own, raw,
unconfected, the perfect collision
of what’s imperfect and fleeting, nothing
needed from you but the seeing – sensing
your own breakages, all the detritus,
could be offered to the river god, who
knows how to lift it, swirl you into bloom.