Thursday, July 1, 2004

Sunflowers

      Come with me into the field of sunflowers. Their faces are burnished disks, their dry spines creak like ship masts, their green leaves, so heavy and many, fill all day with the sticky sugars of the sun. Come with me to visit the sunflowers, they are shy but want to be friends; they have wonderful stories of when they were young - the important weather, the wandering crows. Don't be afraid to ask them questions! Their bright faces, which follow the sun, will listen, and all those rows of seeds - each one a new life! Hope for a deeper acquaintance; each of them, though it stands in a crowd of many, like a separate universe, is lonely, the long work of turning their lives into a celebration is not easy. Come and let us talk with those modest faces, the simple garments of leaves, the coarse roots in the earth so uprightly burning.

                    Mary Oliver

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