sunflower - study 3

Courage, she says to herself in a giddy voice:
to look clear-eyed into the darkness 
and see the dragonflies fluttering low over the water in pairs,
wings shining of satin because they dare the wind
in the last rays of the summer sun before autumn narrows the aperture.

Loneliness is the precondition, the steadfast friend that says, "Stand up:" 
to plant and to harvest, to reach for the sunflower that wills the ink to the page
where the tapestry of hours and ages weaves
faith into words that become the way, the path to the core of the story
where the blinding brightness all poets have ever sought resides.

On the moors of the mind it is frightening,
The dankness smells of death, the fragile neck of life about to be broken,
the sunflower taken down so one cannot but obsess over the horror of it.
The courage of all things is the tragedy of knowing
borne across the glistening water, the hymn of endings sung to the skies.