-This poem reflects on sunflowers at the close of late summer, where ripeness becomes generosity and the fullness of the season is quietly offered back to the living world.
They stood all summer toward the light,
their golden faces turned to day,
holding the sun in patient bloom,
through weeks of warmth and open sky.
Now evening finds them bending low,
their heavy crowns with ripened seed,
not weary, only filled at last,
with all the season came to give.
Gold fades gently into bronze,
the petals loosen one by one,
while finches gather on the stems,
to carry harvest into song.
So much of late summer is this,
not loss, but generous surrender,
the flower giving more at dusk,
than it ever held in bloom.