Note (Poem)
Today’s poem is written by our guest author, Tyler. This poem’s imagery completely envelops me, a mental vacation. I hope you can read this poem while sipping in some of the evening’s sunbeams.
Note
by Tyler Mortensen-Hayes
• • •
—Have you noticed, friends, how amazing it is
that a sunflower contains itself inside
itself, like somebody you love but could never touch;
how it allows itself, come fall, to turn brown
& droop into nothing, though not before spitting
out the miraculous little clusters of sunlight
that have hardened into its seeds, spreading
over the damp garden where congregations of birds
& squirrels & my own two hands gobble them up,
filling with the nourishment of something that,
just weeks ago, did not even exist; & sometime later
all of those seeds—forgive me for mentioning it—
spill out & rejoin everything that remains uneaten
& buried, under leaves or wet earth, waiting the whole long
hazy winter until, clever things, they grow into sunflowers,
& how impossible to witness this again & again,
year after year, & to always take part, always eating
& growing from what rises so softly, so wordlessly,
from the earth, how lucky we are, dearest friends, to be here.
Tyler is a poet, located in Salt Lake City, a bustling place known for its erratic climate and proximity to vast wildernesses. He once had a friend who told him, “You poets take the weather so personally!” in which Tyler thought–”Why yes, don’t you?”