Vernal Stuff

The Naturalist

Haloing your new head is a never-so-blue sky
under which a cloud of gorse, (its invisible smoke
spring’s incense), causes you to reach,

rooted in the soil of my arms, to touch the beads
of its rosary of just-poached yolk
with your small, rock-pool fist and habitual gasp of why;

but I draw you back, telling an inward not yet,
and offer a single saffron bloom, clean as buttermilk
which you scent and wish to ingest
- unsure from scent alone if it is food or toy.

We skirt the brambles’ tousle and avoid
its unkempt combs. Not yet.
Instead you taste an ash-bud, brand new, its silk
a surprise: a softness you have already begun to forget.