Poem for the height our first sunflowers might have reached

by Erika Luckert

The seeds had said “mammoth”

on the packet, a promise

of prehistoric yellow light,

and so we waited from March

into June, sat alongside

the sprouts each morning, sipped

coffee while the plants grew

almost urgently, week by

week until they were sturdy,

strong. Midsummer, along

with the lawn they came to mow,

the men cut the sunflowers

down, and we found them,

lain in their enormity across

the ground, their stumps still

like ankles, standing severed

in the soil. I remembered all

the sunflower sprouts

and microgreens we had sprinkled

on salads, on pizzas, on tuna

melts, sinking our teeth into

their bright bite without a thought

of what they might have become.

Too late in the year to replant,

we tried it anyway, pressed

mammoth seeds into peat pots,

tended them till they sprouted,

sunk them into the same ground.

The August heat was harsh,

and they faltered as much

as they flourished, grew

only an inch at a time.

With the first breath of fall,

the wind felled them

in the night—not broken,

but bowed all the way

to the ground. We didn’t

know how to raise them,

but found a block of wood

to brace the strongest stem

just a little ways up

from the earth, and the next day,

a little ways more. In the daylight,

its heavy head tilted upward,

strained. When it had angled high

enough, we wrapped a tomato cage

around its stalk for support, counted

the hours of sunshine

as they shrank. We watched

through ragged green leaves

the slow formation of a circle

of tiny yellow teeth. Finally,

in October, our mammoth opened

its mouth into a glorious yawn,

as if to say, have you really

been waiting this long?

---

Erika Luckert is a poet, writer, and educator. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA in Poetry, and a recipient of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, CALYX, Tampa Review, F(r)iction, Boston Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Edmonton, Canada, Erika is currently a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. www.erikaluckert.com