In physic gardens, the silkworms’ passion:
a legendary lust for sweet, scented leaves.
Monks care for striplings, pollen meets stigma,
conception, seeds swell, there is fruit on trees.
The source of soft silk: bending sapling grows, 
Bombyx mori^* spin, memorising aught,
from the knotty gnarled trees, white mulberries,
come gowns for the fine-boned folk of the court.
Yet the cloth they cherish, formed via leaf,
honeyed sheen, textured touch, treasured motif,
greenness presents what’s too hard to import,
to confuse black and white takes little thought.
Those with or without homes, well, or infirm,
revere the results from a lowly worm.

^*Bombyx mori: the silk moth

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