HELIANTHUS
For my beloved sunflowers,
which sprouted on my windowsill in the spring
of 2019 on a whim — “just to plant something.”
They grew all summer and withered in the fall.
I’ll never forget you.
There were four suns
on my windowpane.
Four yellow-headed friends.
Naive and uncomplaining, in a ceramic cage,
they unfurled their buds
and sang
of the stubborn, unyielding life
of plants.
They rejoiced when they sensed the water,
their crowned heads alert —
and in them I felt
the tiniest pulse
of something that gives silence
its heartbeat,
and breathes,
disrupting the dominion
of death by empty gaze.
In each stem and petal, I saw myself,
and hope shone bright —
a refusal
to believe in decay as fate.
“Spring is eternal!
Some cruel jester invented death,
and taught us, poor fools, to see it as the future.
But that’s a lie!
The heart’s bloom is forever —
those who don’t believe in ageing
will never grow old!
And we shall forever —
branching, twining with our roots —
speak of the sun with every bend of our being,
for we believe in the sun,
and the sun is true.
There is nothing but sun,
and water, and humming
of striped bumblebees spinning
outside the glass —
nothing but sunlight,
only Sunday,
and spring. and summer,
and rain, and earth, and wind,
and far below — the pavements and
warm puddles.”
I loved them and listened
to their tales of buzzing bees,
of grass, and rich black soil, of gold —
and I saw love
in that indistinct
whisper,
in the trembling of leaves
and their rough little touches.
And whatever they said,
I believed them.
...
October. Trees shivered,
hissed, curled.
Wet wind spat mud
onto the empty street.
I stood at the window
with a watering can full.
Every action
can be read two ways.
You can see coincidence
or connection.
You can see entire worlds
behind crumbling plaster.
It all depends on the frame you choose,
on how much you hunger
for a conclusion —
you partly shape
what your net will draw in.
“for we believe in the sun,
and the sun is true.”
And then the rays
drill a hole
through the curtain of sorrow.
I looked at the large leaves.
I looked sadly at the large,
drooping leaves.
And the orange, withered petals.
30 September 2019