Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower)
- Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower)
Irrational you may be, in the way
That mathematicians mean it. But you’re all About efficiencies, optimizations.
From apex to primordia, you spiral Into control, girasole, you flower Of the golden mean, the gyre, the twist, the curve.
Triumph of coincidence, master of packing Density, attentiveness to detail. And all this from a flower no one planted, Arisen from last year’s spillage from the birdhouse, Two thousand seeds for the one that engendered you.
Weary of time? I think not. Object lesson For adepts of the trigonometries Of Fibonacci—you are time, a living Sundial, tireless tracker of the light’s Trajectory. You know, you flaming thing, You august standard-bearer for the skies In their last and greatest clarity before The cloudy season, you know there is nothing
Random in the way a space is filled. Nothing ever doesn’t make sense. We Can do the math: each thing will always be The sum of things that came before it. Write This message in the borders of the garden: Phi, the symbol of the mean you mean, The disc atop the slim stalk. Yes, and fie, [End Page 154] By the way, on any and all who’d think to call You weary of time, who’d wrongly reify Those bending rays, that reverent chin-to-chest Kowtow. You know of mortal gravity, Sun-worshipper, you pythia of pith And oil, you oracle of harmony, Order and reason. Of course you bow to it. [End Page 155]
Amy Glynn Greacen’s work has appeared in the New Criterion, Poetry Northwest, Sewanee Theological Review, Best American Poetry 2010, and elsewhere. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
