I, the Half-Century Plant
knock, ring, call, shout...
for time fleets and terns fly south,
and my Half-Century
ends...about now.
Blossoming, I wail
of tight-lipped accountants
and footbound words,
limping angrily, blearily out among you;
I, the Half-Century Plant,
sing in operatic desperation,
my ears to fill.

This is the note of the Half-Century Plant,
beeping softly to alert you
to the debut of its bloom:
scent have I none, yet scented fly
wordless am I, wellspoken,
soulless open I my soul
and rootless fling a tap to Earth
upon the ground which binds me;
I am the eating mammal
and the later worm;
Who gets the bird?
I am the scent of what I might have been
and the root of all to come;
open and awake, and I will
fill thy mind with scatgun nonsense
fill thine eyes with naked black
pour into thy ears the soundless torrent
of a million toothy tongues.

I am the Half-Century Plant:
How Do you Do?
And how do I?
And why?

Hurry up, please; 
it's whithering.

©  Copyright, 2000; Malcolm Beckett