Sunflower Seance

This year's crop of some twenty sunflowers, planted late in a patch of the backyard by the clothesline, is stellar, almost literally, seemingly reaching to the less-yellow stars.

Never had taller stalks.

Three or four are now maybe thirteen feet high, visible to the loud and often unruly neighbors (i.e., young and unbridled) on the other side of the wooden fence.

I thought such tall plants would support only small heads, impish crowns.

But there they are, three drooping, lolling heads of a yellow that surpasses definition.

Proud and fulsome as the seeds of their robust final days germinate.