All My Best to Hamas and Israel: Only, Supreme Leadership of Each: Put Your Heads Permanently in the Bullseye --- No? Cowards, I Thought Not

Today is Monday, 5 January 2009, at 2:09 pm CST.

I wrote this poem because A Friend liked the Montale poem, and then this one.

On the telly: On the Beach.

"Untitled (Sunflowers)"

Take old US 75 north from Tulsa
(no, not the highway on the west, newer and gleaming:
the one on the east,
there since the 30s,
patched and potholed,
the poor relation,
the one my family drove, 50s and 60s,
to the grandparents north of Topeka),
through Bartlesville,
and Caney,
and into southeast Kansas.

Just before you arrive in Independence, KS,
the road turns to the right (east),
and just before then, in summer,
see the crowded fields of sunflowers,
so thick they elbow one another, shouting:
"I'm the best! Pluck me!"

And then remember,
shudder,
that scene in Zhivago,
of foolish civil war,
child soldiers dying in the afternoon,
blood spilt pointless amid the field of sunflowers.

And still,
amid our mere human madness,
each year,
the sunflowers turn their eager, thankful faces to the sun,
chanting:
"This world could be such beauty".