“Books! I meant to reference botanical text,
the knife of dissection,

to lead you by degrees
to tear the rose as I instruct:

but — attention deficit be damned — the essay’s lurched
out of my hands:
all I can think,

my senses assailed by love,
is how scant the hours, how profound the dove.

(I fear that you cannot fathom this subtlety
by research.) ”