Ahead of Death

One tall sunflower, its trunklike stem bent mercilessly, bows almost to the ground on our side of the fence, overcome by its own largeness, broken by its own self, a head so full and ripened it carries the weight of next year's seeds (or this year's creature food) almost to the ground -- and yet achingly beautiful even as its yellow leaves pale and scatter.

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.