Artichoke

It might be considered eccentric to grow artichokes for their flowers.

It's also an excellent cover story for forgetting entirely to pick them.

In any case, doused in mist and chill air and occasional downpours, the ones in my garden are not exactly the pomegranate-burnished fruits of Pablo Neruda's experience.... but none the worse for that. Here's to the heroism of a Northern Isles artichoke, and its struggle to introduce the exotic to my flower beds.

The artichoke
of delicate heart
erect
in its battle-dress, builds
its minimal cupola;
keeps
stark
in its scallop of
scales.
Around it,
demoniac vegetables
bristle their thicknesses,
devise
tendrils and belfries,
the bulb's agitations;
while under the subsoil
the carrot
sleeps sound in its
rusty mustaches.
Runner and filaments
bleach in the vineyards,
whereon rise the vines.
The sedulous cabbage
arranges its petticoats;
oregano
sweetens a world;
and the artichoke
dulcetly there in a gardenplot,
armed for a skirmish,
goes proud
in its pomegranate
burnishes.

From Ode to an Artichoke, Pablo Neruda