Into the season of sunflowers

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 Summer is moving swiftly, as it always does in the northeast U.S. 

Uncertainty abounds as the COVID pandemic -- which, for a time, we seemed to be mastering -- appears to be rebounding. 

This time of year, sunflowers are beginning to show themselves. Here in Lowell, Mass., where I live, many homes have them in their front gardens -- golden beacons offering cheer when it is surely needed. 

Sunflowers are recurring visitors in my life, and every season of sunflowers brings its own memories and associations. 

The sunflower season of 2013 found me driving about, snapping photos of them.

 I found in them a sanctuary I needed as my husband, Lawrence Carradini, struggled in the final months of his life. The other night, at a poetry reading, before reading one of my many poems about sunflowers, I said a flower, or of a garden, is not something I take for granted, ever. 


There are places in the world that humanity inhabits where flowers do not grow, because the sun does not reach there. The people who live in these places are there through no failing on their part, at all.

Flowers, in short, are not given. There are privilege, when, like so many elemental things, they should be a right. 

 As for me, I am a fortunate being. Flowers people my world, sunflowers among them. 

And in sunflowers, I see more than happiness. Sunflowers are primitive, mysterious, and sometimes alien. 

Their beauty speaks to something more than the aesthetics that a human might desire. 


For all those qualities of theirs, I am grateful. 

I could share boundless photos of sunflowers in urban landscapes and spectacular golden fields, but I will offer some restraint and share just a few. 

And, with them, this poem, which appears in my book, Night's Island. 

It was first published in the wonderful journal, Reflect, published by the late William Kennedy. 

Here, too, sunflowers to me now speak of passages, and my hope for many sunflower seasons to come.


Sunflowers

They have corrupted us --

their faces, alien fields

of a thousand eyes, turning,

and transmitting.

They have gathered a tribe of

sentinels, overlooking fences,

like a country barricaded against

bands of traffic and flashing lights.

I loved them and still do.

I could grow up around them

as they have grown up around me.

Like them, I am walking

into the slanting light,

full of stories left undone.


Photos, from top:

A bee works amid sunflowers in Verrill Farm, Concord, Mass., September 2020. Photo by Meg Smith.


A dancer's meditation of sunflowers, Colby Farm, West Newbury, Mass., August 2016. Photo by Derek Savoia.


Sunflowers at Larkspur Farm, Littleton, Mass., September 2015.


Author photo, Verill Farm, Concord, Mass., September 2020. Photo by Derek Savoia.


Meg Smith is a writer, journalist, dancer and events producer living in Lowell, Mass. She welcomes visits to megsmithwriter.com.



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