“The Sunflowers”
A Poem by Mary Oliver
For the 30+ years that I’ve known her, Cindy has always loved sunflowers. She loves their cheerful faces, the beautiful pollinators that they attract, and their steadfastness, hardiness, and reliability, year after year. A sunflower brightens her day, any day.
It wasn’t until after we started Terroir Seeds that we truly got to know them, moving beyond being just “familiar acquaintances” we admired from a distance. That was when we began to see them as working partners in our garden. We learned they could act as a windbreak against our persistent summer winds, attract a whole host of pollinators, and feed the wild birds in the fall with their seeds. We even learned a lesson about their strength when a burgeoning stalk popped our commercial drip tape, sending a stream of water arcing through the morning air! This led us to research further, discovering how farmers would use a dense planting of sunflowers to open up new ground without tilling—their deep roots drilling into the soil to create pathways for air and water, then decomposing to feed the soil over the winter. We saw how those same roots inhibited weed growth, a form of natural allelopathy that made them a valuable ally against stubborn weeds that had previously seemed untouchable.
It was only after learning all this that Cindy introduced me to Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Sunflowers,” and I realized the poem was an invitation to step even closer. Mary suggests that these giants, while seemingly shy, “want to be friends,” and that we’ve been missing their “wonderful stories.” The poem reveals a profound truth: that we can move beyond being a mere acquaintance to become a true friend to the sunflower, if we simply take the time to listen. This photo essay is an invitation to do just that—to listen to their “dry spines creak like ship masts” and understand the “long work of turning their lives into a celebration.”
Come with us, and let’s get to know them better, together.
“The Sunflowers”
by Mary Oliver
Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks,
their dry spines
creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all day with the sticky
sugars of the sun.
Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy
but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young –
the important weather,
the wandering crows.
Don’t be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,
which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds –
each one a new life!
hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,
is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come
and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garments of leaves,
the coarse roots in the earth
so uprightly burning.
Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press