Offering

Offering

Paling light of October gloaming

Sombers and shadows the top-heavy sunflowers,

Their black disks bowed to the dusty ground

On thick stems, thirsty stems.

All day, their faces have traced the sun’s sphere

East to west, then down, out of sight.

On his passage from barn to farmhouse,

My father, on impulse, gathers several flowerheads

In his massive, work-worried hands

As a natural token of his seasoned love

For my sweetly waiting mother

In the golden kitchen windowlight.

Their affection eternal has been plighted

By such ephemeral emblems –

Braided birds nests, stained-glass Monarchs wings,

Forsaken locusts husks, resplendent cardinal feathers –

And, this, a clutch of heat-drooped sunflowers

Bestowed on a barren day that has furnished

No other flowering.