Six Foot Four – Sunflower
What could be
more
outrageous
than
a six foot four
sunflower?
Native
of the Americas.

Perhaps…
10 tonnes of Ai Weiwei’s
famous porcelain sunflower seeds!
10 tonnes,
a tenth of those
covered
Tate Modern’s
Turbine Hall.

The perfect sunshine
yellow, fiery and proud,
stunning spirals
typically loud,
typically
times thirty-four inside,
fifty-five outside,
spirals.

Helianthus annuus
for birds,
for bread, medicine,
dyes, body paints,
sunflower oil,
livestock feed, latex
–yes, latex–
six foot four!

Polly Stretton © 2015

To cheer up a miserable and overcast February afternoon, a rewrite of my 2012 poem about sunflowers, surely the most cheery of all 🙂