In the Nocturnes that the moon sings,

In the often, unheard, melodies,

In the cycle that women of childbearing age have,

In the circular nests of the wood finch,

Life brings its mystery.

I’ve seen the life of a Sunflower timelapse in my mind.

How starting from a seed down in the dirt,

The hull gives way and roots begin

As hairlike tentacles, then horns.

They prowl the underground of the earth for food, like worms.

Then out of bliss, a shoot of green sprouts up,

From the darkness into the light of day.

(I’ve prowled the underbelly of the city for Love,

In places where trash, and old newspapers had blown,

And there, where they, and I,

Were undergoing the process of becoming topsoil,

Right in the darkness there,

I found none, so I went home.

And on my loom, I stretched out yarn

That I had spun from wool and flax,

And died it red, an earthy, dusty crimson,

And I began to weave.)

2

When the first green of the flower sprouts,

It rises as if it just awoke.

It sits up in bed, then stands,

And then, two leaves of equal size open,

Like a mouth, hoping for something to eat.

And it does. It eats the sun,

And wiggles, even if there is no wind to blow it.

And its stem begins to spin up and it puts out

Two more leaves, these, now, with a shape

More wild and ragged, and more recognizable 

As the leaves of sunflower,

And the stem keeps pushing its way

Up into the sky.

(I grew once, and my stem twirled.

My leaves unfurled two by two,

First the innocuous regular pair,

And then the jagged ones that declared my true allegiance.

The dark green places between my leaves

Soaked up the quiet of summer evenings

And the heat of summer days in Texas,

And the songs the warblers sing.

And my eyes, sought the skies

For something for my soul to eat,

Something to devour, a lover or a friend,

And so it did. 

I ate the sun, daily.)

3

The lonely Sunflower spends days

Digging it’s roots into the loam,

Shooting it’s stem into the airy space we call the sky,

Building its stem, in height, and also girth,

It’s intelligence, impossible to measure,

Putting leaves out in the perfect arrangement 

For each to get the most abundant sunlight.

(And I walked the plains for years.

My only canopy was my wild hair,

Blowing like a horse’s main.

I fed on the stars that shined at night,

And in their poems they breathed out,

I saw them fall.

I heard them cry and yet their happy songs belied

A deep reverence for the source of Life.

And sometimes I ran.

The sandy plains that gave way to wind,

The beaches, the dunes, the marinic tunes

The ocean sang, yes,

Sometimes I ran.)

4

(Wanna be in love with me?

Play some jazz, and croon my name.

Tell me that you’ll never be the same

Now that you’ve danced the dance of love with me.)

The stem of a Sunflower will finally reach

The statured height that its own DNA

Has written down, so secretly in code,

And just as you think it’s energy has stopped,

A node will form, a nodule sprawling green and wild,

A tumultuous head,

Like a monster, fanged with teeth

And terrible eyes, all of green,

And in a heart-stopping jolt of a moment,

It raises up, inquisitively,

To see who it is has woken it

From its sleep, its peaceful slumber,

To this strange life where days are numbered,

And then, its petals appear.

5

(I’ve practiced being here with you

By lying on my side like this and looking up 

To listen to the sky, while it whistles 

And tells about its day.

And now, we’ll practice saying, “I love you.”

You go first, and then I’ll say it, too.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Wait. Who said that?

Oh don’t worry it’s just the cat

Talking his nonsense again.)

But when the Sunflower blooms,

It doesn’t care

If anyone is there to see it.

It doesn’t bloom for me or you,

Or for the cat.

It doesn’t wait for truth to happen

Or try to go and find it.

It is truth and it just blooms

With bliss inside it.

The righteousness that shines from it is

Like the sun.

The happiness that everyone can see

If we would ever pay attention,

If we would bother to heed

The Life that longs to bloom within us,

Without a creed, or a teaching,

Without identity, just a far reaching sense

Of deep intelligence, and all the conditions 

Being ripe, for life to exist.

For us to thrive, and bloom, we only need to know,

We are alive, right here, amidst the wilds,

And rooted in, the source of all creation.

6

And now I wake,

Sit up in bed.

And now I stand.

I stretch and wiggle,

Even though there is no wind.

I’m weaving the earthy crimson reds

With the greenest greens

Upon the loom 

Inside my head.

And now I bloom.

-jenn