Sunflowers

No, nor a fierce hurrah

for what it does without choice,

for following the light

for the same reason the light follows it.

Just a thing rough to the touch, a face

like a thousand ticks turning their backs,

suckling at something you can’t see,

and a body like a tag off the earth

so that my child hands couldn’t tear it out

from the overgrown lot next door.

                           My palms raw with the shock

of quills and spines. Its hold like spite, and ugly

except when seen from a distance—

a whole field of them by the highway,

an 80-mile-per-hour view

                           like a camera’s flash.

All of them like halos

without saints to weigh them down.