from seeds here & in my backyard

Sunflower plants turn
toward the sun weeks
before flowers arrive.

The stalks must convince
the blossoms they know
what they are doing, well ahead
of believing themselves

buds will arrive.

///

My son Jack planted sunflower seeds in the circular flower bed we created inside our fence a couple years ago. We have alternately planted something there and let the weeds have their way. I noticed this year, for the first time, that the plants have been practicing following the sun across the sky. I’d always thought they waited for the flowers.

I wanted to write about it, though not make a poem containing only it. So I’m considering this a seed of its own. And it’s related for me to these (Deb’s 18th and 16th stones). It’s also, of course, not un-related to things going on in my life at the moment and how you can’t always hold the belief that something lovely is going to open up. But you do what you do because something somewhere in you knows.

I want to at least, for now, name it something unrelated to sunflowers. Maybe I will call it, “Hiring movers” or something. Not sure.

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