Poetry: Sunflower

I wrote this at work, scribbling down a variation of what you read below in my tiny red notebook after a conversation about cranes. I was anthromorphising, or maybe just trying to be funny, by naming the cranes along Oxford Road. My favourite is still Brian Craneston. Anyway, here's a love poem with a crane in mind.

Sunflower

after Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a construction crane?

Stoic in the silence of the night, unmoved

By rough winds. Stationary in the rain,

Hazard lights like piercing eyes

Beset by ropes and chains.

From the perimeter, you’re a bird in roost

Unmanned at midnight, a zoo-bound creature.

It seems impossible that someone dreamt you

Welded steel and bolts to dress you

And grew you there, a sunflower.

You extend beyond my comprehension.

When in eternal lines you rise like church spires

Contained and heavy-headed in ascension

So as the morning shook and rattled you from slumber

So I wait beneath you, hooked.