The Sunflower

This afternoon I bought a sunflower in the Campo de Fiori. “Che bello!” I said in my best Italian as I handed the vender due Euros. He wrapped it in foil, and I carried it home like a child with an ice cream cone. No vase to be found, I slipped it snugly into a Chianti wine bottle with a long neck.

Is it funny that after all the sunflowers you’ve bought me, I’ve never looked at one closely before? Every other sunflower has shone from my desk like a beacon of light in the Seattle haze. Here in my sun-baked apartment, this Roman sunflower still offers itself.

I study it closely. Dew clings to its innermost circle like rhinestones in a velvet gown. The surrounding circle seems made of a thousand little mouths. In the outmost rim a thousand tiny black birds fly. A tiny worm emerges and disappears again under the folds in flight.

Now its yellow petals seem strangely misplaced, lifting out in flaming gusts of gold. Each wear a thousand tiny wrinkles, folded so softly you’d hardly know. Its leaves are like misty rivers with many stones that flicker in light streaks under water leaps.

Such a wondrous world in so small a face gazing at me now! It is like summer born out of a hazy January morning. It is like us. Remember when we startled each other? The shy girl with the yellow umbrella, the boy who couldn’t forget about her. You were that delightful surprise in a long winter.