The Botanist's unfinished plan.

In a forest away from public scrutiny,
there hides the daughter of a revered Botanist
who in the later part of life created his ideal embodiment
of Mother Nature.

There in her follicles
four hundred thousand seeds of ivy lie.
Her hair grows and grows, and vines
through the forest as days go by.
Summer is easy and carefree but
in the winter there needs a prompt
so every morning she calls out-
''Sunlight! Sunlight! Bow down your might!''
To which the colour of chlorophyll spreads delight.

She tried life in society,
thought of growing up against a family home wall.
Camouflaging herself with the other Hedera hibernica.
Disappearing in that sort of half-life kind of way.
But seeing the people and how they lived
the lack of stillness, the lack of beauty,
the excess of noise, the cars, the pollution it all caused-
it's true that without indecisiveness, and to feed the Botanist's plight
she knew being among the wild felt right.

The new look of intellectual

no one speaks of my new face
i painted my nose blue
i added more hair to my eyebrows

i thought i would look more intellectual if
my brain could be seen by all
so i found a man (Dr Chan) who replaced my forehead
with a transparent window to my neocortex

he told me 'the look' is catching on in Paris and Tokyo.
they're speaking about my face there
soon everyone will want this

soon beauty will be all about the brain

[illustration by Paulo Rafael]