Judith Skillman The Sunflower Stands taller than a man, close to the roof of a house that might have been Lotte’s— a houseful of children with no mother. Its leaves open to carry whatever is left in this bone-dry season of clouded visions. I suspect fatigue lies at the bottom of the well. This flower: less than an aristocrat, more than a serf. Barely bourgeois, like Goethe’s Werther when he went to take a court position. Its single eye opens like the sun, a Cyclops of tufted seeds the harvest will never see. Nothing comes to the one who gazes up at a single flower and wishes for treasure. Jack climbed the beanstalk and fell back to earth. Sunflower: tower, air castle, middle-aged star.

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