More than a thousand buds have arrived in the garden.
Yesterday I looked and there were none.

Tangled into a slump of sullen green
and bursting with sap they’ve over-run

the armandii buddleia jasmine vine
and cluster by cluster flick their swollen thumbs

or sit on their fingers waiting to open,
point their beaks up at the little sun.

Their copper thorns will not be soft for long
and something like a feather in a lung

unfurls its spine inside their inside skin.
A feeling wonders what it might become

and daylight budges up, slips in between
as if there were enough for every one.

Rain or shine they will be flowers soon
and by their own extravagant over-production

lost in a scented commotion of white then gone:
hips where their heads were, this year’s growing done.

The rose will forget its name but ramble on
with a fence in its shoulder, rubbing its bones, unstrung.

The sky remembers everything it’s seen.
More than a thousand buds stick out their tongues.