Fall has arrived. Though we have experienced some of the hottest days this summer, there is now a scent of chillier air that will eventually lead us into the inevitable winter. No matter our age, September can bring with it that anticipation of learning. It seems the rhythm of the school year is etched deep in our senses. I always feel something like hope in these weeks when the shift to busses driving by and children standing in wait appear. Something is triggered in me that has me thinking about new opportunities, new lessons to learn. There is always the desire to buy at least one notebook…just in case.

As I have been thinking about this shifting time, what really has captured my imagination is really the learning I have experienced over this summer. It all began with that crazy, amazing sunflower that planted itself outside my kitchen window. I wrote earlier about this seven foot beauty that just kept sprouting new limbs and then shooting out yellow blossom after yellow blossom.  In fact, it is still at it!

The first learning was to pay attention to all the things that happen in life in which I had no part in their creation. A very big, important lesson. Yet over the last weeks this plant has offered up even more wisdom. Not long after the golden flowers bloomed, bees…a variety of bees… started arriving to drink of the nectar which I imagine to be sweet. I don’t know this to be the case but it is how I imagine it. Then in the last three weeks tiny birds have perched on the shoots and tips of the flowers eating the seed of the sunflowers. I can stand at my kitchen sink and stare with awe at the beauty of goldfinches and sparrows and wrens nibbling away. They are so close I can see their little eyes and the movement of their beaks. Each time I find myself holding my breath in part so I don’t frighten them away but also because their presence seems to warrant a breath-holding moment. 

And at different times, there will be several kinds of bees, these beautiful, fragile birds… and then a monarch butterfly will show up. All these beings co-existing together on the same plant, sharing in the gift the sunflower offers. Right there for me to observe. And I think of how we are all of us…insects, winged ones, this two-legged one…here all together, sharing this moment in time, on this little plot of land, swirling around the galaxy on this big, beautiful ball of Earth. It is a lesson in the countless ways we are connected to so many living things. It has helped me to be awake and aware of all those whose lives are a part of my own living. And it has caused a kind of confounded, humble, gratitude to grow in me.

The poet Ross Gay wrote a book of poetry called simply The Book of Delights in which he offers many images of these kinds of wake up calls that can lead to a gentler living. He has written this poem which he calls Wedding Poem:

Friends, I am here to modestly report
seeing in an orchard
in my town
a goldfinch kissing
a sunflower
again and again
dangling upside down
by its tiny claws
steadying itself by snapping open
like an old-time fan
its wings
again and again,
until, swooning, it tumbled off
and swooped back to the very same perch,
where the sunflower curled its giant
swirling seeds
around the bird and leaned back
to admire the soft wind
nudging the bird’s plumage,
and friend I could see
the points on the flower’s stately crown
soften and curl inward
as it almost indiscernibly lifted
the food of its body
to the bird’s nuzzling mouth
whose fervor 
I could hear from
oh 20 or 30 feet away
and see from the tiny hulls
that sailed from their 
good racket,
which good racket, I have to say
was making me blush,
and rock up on my tippy-toes,
and just barely purse my lips
with what I realize now
was being, simply, glad,
which such love,
is we let it,
makes us feel.

Though the poet says it much better than I ever could, this is some of what I have learned this summer. And now I am ready for what this ‘school year’ will bring and what new lessons await. Thank you, Summer Sunflower. You have been an amazing teacher.