It’s the way the splayed palms, spades of leaves,
flood out from the trunk
at every juncture a possible function, a new direction:

neutrino tracks in cloud chambers,
a flood of parchment, mapping the march of new discoveries
off the main channel –
that seem to bring down the single-minded, one-directional,
into a dissipation of directions
constantly confounding and confounded by the whole
patterned disaster of the flower’s head.

There’s a thrill of darkness about this brilliance surprises,

like the sun’s darkness,
but brilliance is out-brillianced by detail, full-glow colour
by the maze and whorl of seed heads,
as if the eye’s happiest with idle generalities: once content
with the object, settles to enjoyment:
the vital details wind-in the forebrain, an upright
alertness, the cortex reluctant.