The Sunflowers at Jello Mold Farm

Sunflower behind plastic

I thought the sunflowers at Jello Mold Farm were deserving of their own post, too.  Usually I think of sunflowers as loud and brash and bold, but I was captivated by their softness on this photographic outing.  Maybe this was reflective of my inner softening at the lateness of the season.  Or it may have been the diffused light under the plastic greenhouse covering.  Regardless, I was pleased with my photos.  Here they are:

The Sunflowers
by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems

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 of the earth
so uprightly burning.