Drab, his room, like a prison cell, north-facing,
swill coloured; depressed outhouses crowded
into his window, a man-made fungal growth;
tea-coloured light oozed from the bare bulb
into his soul, till it too was of the same paint.
One day, he broke some daffodils in the park,
picked them up and brought them home;
left them lying, a rag of sunshine on the table.
Sunlight at last; he went back for more:
crocuses, tulips, ivy, grasses, bluebells, lilies.
Now a flower- bed larcenist, his room an explosion
in a paint factory bedecked from ceiling to floor
with all the flowers of the season, and his soul
blooming in colours that were, once, no more to him
than litter strewn across unkempt suburban lawns.
But as seasons passed and flowers died, unsatisfied
he learned to grow beauty; bulbs, slips, seeds.
That magic took him from his room to the library
where the tendrils of his research spread to faraway
places, and he travelled with them.
Books littered his table; a scatter of ripe, fallen fruits.
Sunlight poured upward from their pages, exploded
in firework blossoms all the way up to the ceiling,
all day, as though he had turned the house around;
and, in a way, I think you could say, he had.
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