Around the inner rims

of these sunflowers one by one

small yellow petals pop open,

in obedience to the sun.

    On some the inmost circles,

    bright yellow, is almost complete,

    circumspect around the seeds

    that are still virginal, tight, neat.

Their elegance is in the way

they fill their places, in dumb-show

greening the ghost life of mathematics,

their order cosmic, their time to come.