In the room where I write, a woman who now raises alpacas once slept, and in another room I dream of a poet bringing me a precious peony bush from her garden but whose name in the way of dreams I’ve forgotten. She says oh dear, I’ve brought the wrong peony and I say what I really want is to know how one word can be a poem, a request the poet ignores as she tuts and tsks over my garden which I’ve asked her to advise on and which she does by pointing and saying that there is in the wrong place and this is how you choose the right place, it has to do with breath not some wild-ass idea you have about freedom and this has to come out and this and this and when we’re done a single shrub remains, a La Di Da Floribunda Rose, everything else in a heap at the feet of the compost bin.

Van Gogh’s Blooming Rose Bush, 1889

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