Sunflowers #poetry #poem

With your lion’s-mane fringe
of boldest yellow, you
look down on me
or look up to the sky.

When I was a child
I used to measure
my height by you
tall in the summer sun

always taller than I
yet I knew, if I plucked a handful
of your zebra-stripped seeds
and planted them

I’d grow a plant which I
could tower over
for some short weeks
in early summer

now, long after this early sowing
every summer they stand proud
in all their colours, brightening the darkest cloud
still growing, still reminding me of you.

© Experimentsinfiction 2021, All Rights Reserved

A poem using concrete imagery

I was really interested to read Ren Powell’s Instagram Post about concrete vs. abstract imagery, especially as it started with the question ‘Do you write more often of cockroaches or “Love”?’ This made me realise that my poetry certainly tends towards the abstract, and made me want to challenge myself to do things differently.

Seamus Heaney was the master of this technique, using concrete objects to provoke an emotional response in the reader, with scant reference to the emotions themselves. Take, for example, his poem ‘Blackberry Picking.’

I had a go at concrete imagery in this poem. Sunflowers were my sister’s favourite flower, and for that reason whenever I see one, I think of her, and smile.

Sharing with earthweal’s Open Link Weekend.