Th e Tou c h
A finger of sun in the fork of an ash finds the green hearts of the violets, so downcast from a late spring they incline to the moss they are rooted in, all their sugars gone, until the gradual touch of the light, implicit, insistent, cajoles them and they cup open, greedy as the Sheela-na-Gig, or the flowers’ Alexandrian blue, the top two petals pulled back to show the cuckoo’s shoe.
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