Photograph by Chris Sims
Lots of you found the sunflower above quite irresistible and from the shortlist of ten the poem that the readers most favoured was The Things I Have To Do To Make Sunflowers by Johanna Boal. Congratulations Johanna and thank you to everyone who sent in poems and voted.
Poem 1
September Sunflowers
Not our six-foot inula
with its intricate whorls of petal-head,
elephant-ear leaves, and serpent stems
we mistakenly named as “English sunflower”
but the real McCoy we logged – is it
twenty years ago now? – in field after
field as driving south through France:
gold, open-faced, and shoulder-height –
you know, those we jokingly doffed
van Gogh’s Wunderkind as, living up
to their naming, tournesol, they followed
the sun, their heads resplendent, their
yellows heavy in bright sunlight.
Well, yes – these, but not these.
They’re autumnal now. Clown-sad sentinels
fading daily through amber to ochre, then brown,
their leaves drying to brittle flap, and heads
hanging in a sort of sadness
like shrunken old men exchanging
smalltalk on street corners, and eking
out their waiting time.
Roger Elkin
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Poem 2
Crowd Pleasers
Everybody loves a sunflower.
A born leader
Not too regal like a magnolia
Nor common as a bluebell
A plant to look up to.
A flower of the people.
Twisting towards the sunlight
However the wind blows it
Oozes authority.
In ascendance we look up to it
As we always have done
And will again.
But when time strips away the finery
Will there be a seedy legacy?
Martin John
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Poem 3
Architecture in a Sunflower
We find in Mother Nature’s building bricks
the wonder of a pleasing thing called Phi
as seen in each sunflower’s seed helix.
The boffins talk of golden one point six;
while numbers help explain, don’t tell us why
we find in Mother Nature’s building bricks
the thrill a Fibonnaci growth depicts.
We watch the world revolve, the sun go by
as seen by each sunflower’s seed helix
whose eyes behold a brightness to transfix
the mortal who needs only now to die.
We find in Mother Nature’s building bricks,
like Vincent’s corolla of ochre flicks,
the sublime ratio that makes us sigh,
as seen in each sunflower’s seed helix.
Defying gravity and size conflicts
we try to stretch our structures to the sky
we look to Mother Nature’s building bricks
and copy each sunflower’s seed helix.
Sue Spiers
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Poem 4
Bright in the Morning
The garden begins to change.
Bulbs sprout, buds pop and bloom;
weeds sprawl like drunk students in the sun.
I’m sure we planted sunflowers
by our house once.
Did they stretch tall and vibrant?
Did parents-pause to comment?
I can’t remember.
Do they grow back each year?
I guess I’ll just have to wait.
At best, I think one might appear,
bright in the morning,
yet will struggle to grip-tight to the day,
limp by dusk;
head bowed for the stars.
Tomas Bird
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Poem 5
The Sunflower Fields
They stand row after row in tight formation,
Heads in perpetual slow-circling motion
Turning always to the source of life;
Grown to maturity in full blazing light
Grown tall and strong on ultraviolet rays,
Each familiar giant yellow-petalled face
A child’s bright painting of a summer sky.
Later, when the earth about them is baked dry
And they, seed heavy, season’s work complete,
All turning ceased wait patiently their fate
Wait stiff and shrivelled, blackened, bent,
Don’t pity their inevitable end;
Think how they lived, not what they have become:
A life in splendour, following the sun.
David Prior
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Poem 6
Thanks
“Thanks for the money. Thought
I’d spend some time away from
my tiny rented room. Headed
south to find the sun.
I came, I saw, but for the life of me
couldn’t conquer, capture, or detain
the veiled landscape until: I’d scaled the hills,
broken through the cloud and found meadows
flood-full of head-heavy golden-yellows, like these,
swaying, bowing, genuflecting and I too prayed
it might not rain. So, I set up shop, lifted
pallet-orange on to canvas – just a little –
at least that’s what I intended. Then, with usual
practised pepper-stroke skills, added yellow
splashes and a trace of seed-black shadow
until my flower-scene canvas-flourished
once again and, Dear brother Theo, I hope
it looks as good upon your office wall;”
So wrote Vincent before
He lost his better ear.
Mike Lee
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Poem 7
The majesty of summer
She stands proud and tall,
A diadem of gold
around her head,
How glorious ,how bold!
Not bowed ,or cowed
to the brilliance of the Sun;
Eye to eye, face to face
she stands,
Mouth wide open,she shouts
her claim,
The majesty of summer, is me!
And there are more to fill this space
as I move on,
More to take my place,
when I am gone.
Leela Gautam
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Poem 8
Sermon for the sun.
Turn your face toward the sun;
Brightness will warm your mind,
Ease your bones,
Lighten your thought.
This has been bought
For you, this light
Gift of existence.
Like a sunflower that’s begun
To unfurl its face sunward,
Let your life unwind,
And your bones might.
Let your cares, the ones
You know and those forward
Ones yet to be known, fraught
With the persistence of darkness, go.
Existence is not enough.
Becoming more than we are
Is where meaning begins,
Why religions
Have power, with their gruff
Insistence
That there is One behind
What can be seen
Whose ways are what we mean.
What, really, do religions know?
In the dark I turn toward the light,
The sun shines, lives grow;
Darkness comes, lives fail, fall,
Yet life’s begun again
Like the sunflower each year.
Though unlike the sunflower
Beginning again needs another power ‐
One who is all that we may become
Imagined, makes and mends;
Makes love possible and peace and friends.
Till all’s done
Dark shakes the world again‐
Earthquake, abuse, war.
Don’t turn to these,
They’re not what we’re for;
Don’t let them be the sum
Of our existence, become our all.
Like the sunflower uncurled
Dark trembles at the light maker, mender of the world.
Bones take their ease, hope is unfurled.
In a dark world light has again begun.
Turn your face toward the sun.
Michael Docker
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Poem 9
Sunflowers
Showy, gaudy things they are,
but what you see is what you get,
what you get is what you see,
childlike and obvious,
not subtle like me.
The faces we show to the
world every day
hide strengths, thoughts and fears,
things may not be ok
as the flower turns its head
to the warmth of the sun,
watch me smile, face the days
I will not turn and run.
Angie Butler
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Poem 10
The Things I Have To Do To Make Sunflowers
Give me thread, a big needle
I will hang sunflowers into the big skies.
But first give me an infinite amount of cotton
so I can launder them with a yellow dye.
I will go to France, dry them out in fields
call upon my friend Vincent
to act as a scarecrow. Suggest he might
paint them as well.
Then I will take them to the galleries
show them to the public, sew into their minds
the importance of their petals, the yellow
old master in the big skies.
Johanna Boal
