A Time to Sow


What is it about sunflowers? Bright brown
faces too large, encircled by bent yellow
beards, I keep waiting for them to smile.
 
Fall comes quickly to Kansas. The sunflowers
bob their huge noses, sniffing in the first
promise of northern gales. Their stout green
 
bodies shiver in ditches, trimming empty fields,
thick stalks bowing south, then north, caught
between two winds in the days of sunlight
 
grown dim and cold. They can only watch
as the hard red wheat is sown for winter: a
promise of December snows, a someday sun.
 
They bow their faded heads. I wonder if they,
too, wait in joyful hope for the coming of
a peeled yellow springtime, bright as petals.
 
Soon, their brittle stalks will snap, land lightly
on dry soil, their broad, open faces still skyward.