By Mary Oliver
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 in the earth
so uprightly burning.
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After decades of knowing her online, I have finally met Mary Ellen! She was still in town after Worldcon, so she came over from where she was staying and we hung out in the afternoon, then had dinner delivered from Kanishka and walked on the dock, where we saw many animals -- otters and muskrat, wood ducks and Canada geese, swallows, osprey, an eagle, a green heron, a kingfisher.
We half-watched the Orioles lose, saw the beginning of the Mariners win, and after Mary Ellen headed out for the evening, we watched this week's Foundation episode (in which we found out Dusk is going to die whether or not Dawn and Day reappear, and that the Mule's parents assholes like him), and now we're watching more Poldark. Sunflowers in full bloom in Duvall last weekend:
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