The Wrong Bed

The sunflower, yellow-rayed,
had forced its way between
the ulna and the radius,
inclined its head
and let its myriad seeds
spill from its matrix there
into the stainless steel of waiting palm
all but concealed
beneath a wave of brambles. Never
did steel look flimsier,
nor more appropriately placed.
Prosthetic limb among the fallen limbs
of silver birch, ground-hugging
creepers and a hug of leaves,
its pin-thin pistons
and twin cylinders
caught flecks of sun
to make it visible -
and kith to all those creepers
creeping over it.
It might have rooted,
might even have forsaken
its technology,
and gone to earth again -
from whence
all things derive.