The heavy-headed sunflowers loom monstrous above the yard.

They are harbingers of change, burdened with the pronouncement

of the end of summer's droning heat and cicada swell.

They bow their massive, seeded faces, bent over stalked bodies

seemingly shot-up overnight.

Who tended to these flowers the size of young oak trees?

What did they eat?

In walking past I am transported to a prehistoric Eden,

a Paleolithic paradise of wild; oversized and overripe.

I forgive them their obtrusiveness,

their disrupting my delusion:

summer will end and fall will drain its color.

All the while glowing golden,

coaxing yellow-petaled, mythological

flowers from the lawn.