Poem of the month: "Mediation and the Sunflower" by Iain Bamforth

Mediation and the Sunflower

Umbrella flowers from the Americas
are growing in the garden, a lithe composition
at each corner of the singed lawn.
Their yellow heads look down from a great height. 

I might consider grasping one at its base,
and holding it over you like a sheltering parasol -
Picasso escorting Françoise Gilot
from the beach at Golfe-Juan to the dark room.

Instead we watch bees stream to their ritual centres,
the revelation being of a different order.
Light seeds a geometrical floret
whose very force is reciprocity, bold solar gold.

Iain Bamforth, doctor and poet, explains the inspiration for his poem:

What's the mediation in the poem?

Poets have always been drawn to the gangly sunflower, so avid for light it actually resembles the sun it adores. As the sunflower suggests, interesting things happen at boundaries, whether between natural things or abstract ideas.

You pack three places into your short poem: the Americas, France, and your garden. Where's your garden?

Northern Strasburg, about a kilometre from the Rhine, on the flood-plain between the Black Forest and the Vosges that once was cause and scene of much conflict. I write a lot about the effects of globalisation on culture, and the sunflower—a native of the Americas, along with the tomato and potato—is a good example of an exotic species that has become thoroughly naturalised.

Your poem emphasises geometry and ritual. Why?

In 1917, the great Scottish zoologist, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, published "On Growth and Form", which established some of the mathematical forces behind the apparent riddles of form in nature. The golden angle, familiar to classical architects, is found in the spiral arrangement of florets in a sunflower head: they carousel to the tune of the famous Fibonacci mathematical sequence.

What made you think of Robert Capa's photo of Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot?

Our sunflowers were over two metres tall, and developed inflorescences so large and heavy we had to brace the stems. I couldn't help but hold one over my wife to cast shade in the manner of Picasso "faisant la parade" - being gallant towards his companion Françoise Gilot in that beautifully poised photo by Capa on the beach at Antibes.

How important are bees?

Bees putter through several of my poems. The bee and hive were the most common symbols of industry prior to the hammer and sickle. It's not just honey that we get from bees—35 % of the human diet is dependent on the products of pollination. Recently, a local scientist friend published a survey of the recent bee colony collapse disorder which spells out the devastating consequences were bees to disappear.

Are you a friend of the earth?

We're organic gardeners, and my wife attends an annual course in the Black Forest on permaculture techniques. Our insect hotels have high occupancy rates. And I gave a lecture last year on D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's work. The German audience was surprised that such an original thinker has no reputation outside the odd structural engineering or design course...

"Mediation and the Sunflower" by Iain Bamforth is taken from his latest book, "The Crossing Fee", published in February 2013.

Check out our bee campaign and find out what you can do to help bees.