Giving their last hurrah, like so many suns shining throughout the heavens, the little sunflowers mirror the nighttime sky, awash with stars and dreams of other worlds. Their perfect echo here on Earth, each flower shines brilliantly in a green sky that stretches on for eternity. Or at least until fall, but they take no notice of their brief existence.
 |
| Dancing to the waltz in the wind . . . |
It’s as if they know something we don’t. It is not a feigned bravery I see in the
fields, but an explosion of true confidence borne of an inner knowledge. A secret.
A ritual. “I have done this
before,” they whisper. Fearlessly they
whip back and forth in a wind that already has an edge of crispness to it, but
they meet it head on as a well-rehearsed dance partner on an aristocratic
ballroom floor. Each knows the dance
perfectly, having practiced it for many lifetimes, and each knows that this is
the last song the band will play tonight.
But it doesn’t matter, because they have done this before,
and when their brilliant yellow gowns lie tattered in the mud of the field,
washed away by the freezing fall rains, there will be no regrets. Even the Sun must genuflect at times, His
great knee planted into the secret depths of the field.
I would be wise, then, to remember in winter the
twinkling golden stars and their secret worlds, fertile with life that begs to
spring forth again. What does a season
or two of death matter in the great scheme of things? The band will play ever anon, and my dance
card will be newly full. And the Old
Alchemist? He continues to weave the
golden threads into the harsh grey linen cloth, a King’s tunic in disguise.
