Sunflowers

The sunflowers will have passed
by the time you’re here.
They bow their heads already,
a prayer, faces pocked and
picked dry by bees

Think of all the things that have been born
and, just so, have disappeared
in the time we’ve been apart—
whole lifetimes spanned, our world
razed and remade again and again,
sunflowers come and gone

They turn, knowingly, from the light
to face the earth as I watch.
And when you’re here,
it will be as if they’d never bloomed
at all.

But in their place, we know,
there will arise in time a new field
of honeyed faces, a truth
that is more definite than you
or I could ever be.

We ourselves cannot be guaranteed,
but there is certainty beyond us.
Return is infallible.

Stand at the edge of the field
with me. Watch as impermanence
gives way to more sunflowers.

Castle Yuran is an MFA graduate from Goddard College, professional writing tutor at Northwest Connecticut Community College, and English teacher at Post University. This poem comes from her MFA thesis collection entitled, Home is a Road.