Still point of the turning world

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.
--T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.

When I first read T. S. Eliot's Burnt Norton, I didn't know what a clematis was. Since moving to Oregon I've become fond of them. This one looks like it's spinning at the still point of the turning world, and it so hypnotized me that I took a whole series of pictures of it, trying to get the detail of the feathery flower without the busy background.

I spent most of today with my friend Alex, who led me to another place I'd never been before, Leach Botanical Gardens,  planted by a couple who fell in love early in the twentieth century and spent much of their lives collecting plants. Lilla Leach was a botanist, her husband John a pharmacist; both were outdoorsy and loved to hike, and they explored much of Oregon on foot, often with their two burros, collecting plants they took home to their garden, which they left to the City of Portland. It's an enchanting place, full of enormous and stately trees as well as rare plants. This clematis is one.