Close to blue August and the sand-kept shores
of seven seas, there's an overflow
of Bougainvillea's festive truth, that change
versus change is constant. Like thought it grows
while it imbues deep riddles from the gods.

You loved its name before you knew about
its claim to climb the seasons from all sides,
scanting the muse of darkness to break out
in blooms of blood-rushed pink, sunset-flame & white;
riding the air as in a freedom-hunt.

It greens like the fragments of time you fill,
and buds beneath the spell of words that oceans
the connection over.  It knows that deeds
are raised from inside out; it leaps the reins
of strength, stemming through the strictest droughts.

So in this hour of far conditions; you and I
between midnight and noon, I write this verse
and turn the candle round.  Not even these
black-outs will stop it now. The path is close
to a garden of nutmeg and pimento.

You loved the name Bougainvillea before
you knew it grows between the seams of stones
as well as it resists the straw-bed pots.
When asked if you would guess its root, you said,
'What good's a bet that can't be lost?'