To A Pine Cone

No one is apt to pay you much attention,
a dull brown thing half-buried
in October's rain-wet shaggy grass.

No one sees the paradox of your wooden openness,
the offering of your naked seed.

No one teases at the puzzle of your ovoid bracts,
homely scales ungraced by their elegant spiralling mathematics,
their dance around that thin hard stem.

I let you fall and walk on, rub
at the tacky residue.