POEM · ATTENTION AND PRESENCE
At first there is only the flower, yellow enough to occupy the frame. Its petals have not agreed on a shape: one rises almost to a point, one folds beneath another, one carries a narrow seam of shadow down its middle. What looks from farther off like a single orange center is, this close, crowded— small florets opening among florets, each with its own dark mark. The leaves are rougher than the bloom, broad and deeply veined. The pale stem holds the flower a little off level. For ten seconds this is the world. Then the camera draws back. Below it, among the same leaves, another yellow flower appears— smaller, lower, turned slightly away. It has made no entrance. It was there before the frame admitted it. The hand moves closer again. The first flower enlarges. Petal by petal, yellow takes back the edges of the screen. The smaller flower goes out of sight, still on its stem, still flowering.