Labor Day

All weekend, I’ve chased sunflowers,
while the holiday cheered itself along with
BBQs and revelers, every Airbnb stocked to
capacity. The mountain stood back from these
first shorter days cloaked in her luscious dignity,
an end-of-summer worn to green that both deepened
and illuminated the intensity of all that was possibility
between earth and sky. In one of those valleys, I saw
the first sunflowers finding dusk. Three faces resting
on a fence, wire-checked, patterned like a table cloth or
quilt, the perfect place to find summer sleep. And I
remembered the stand of sunflowers behind the
neighbor’s fence, how I’d missed them this year without
even realizing they weren’t there. Although I don’t know
this neighbor, I felt deprived, how dare they, there had
been so many. So I started looking elsewhere, and found
the second batch by Monday. Miles from the sleepy flowers,
these in full afternoon light, yet held in place by the same
mountain—some just promises unopened, some the size
of fine china platters, bent and ready to fall, a couple
perfect, oblivious to my quest, more vibrant than a hidden sun.