Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Tuesday Poem: previously published by Philadelphia Stories in Summer 2008


  Sunflowers


Vincent understood them: the way they yield
their darkling faces to the sun,
aflame for its arcing shimmer dance
across the day’s mysterious expanse,
how big they are, how weighty, over grown,
the way they lean together in the fields,
conspiring to hold each other up, creak and groan
as their heads reach critical mass, aswarm with too much seed.

He gathered them in vases, painted
their petaled fall from grace,
bunched together, shy, askew
and awkward, out of place,
caught their surprise at being indoors,
the droop and shrug of leaves,
the way they suddenly dropped,
losing all of their color.
Too painful to paint them
riotous at the roadside in full bloom:
signs of what we were before
the crows moved in to feed.

1 comment:

Michelle Elvy said...

Oh I like the way this moves from the still images of sunflowers to their 'conspiring' in the fields, and how hard it is to view them as they really are, living or withering. Interesting and lovely.