Sunflowers in Berkeley

Newly arrived in Berkeley at the end of August,
I commiserate with the local sunflowers
too sunburned and heavy already
to hold their faces up toward the smothering sun,
which they used to call home.

Like a cavalcade
of faithless, road-weary pilgrims
they stare, guilt-ridden, at their feet instead,
trekking an unasked-for journey
while the ripe seeds drop on the ground,
tears that have wholly blackened
their once green eyes.

No, this is neither the time, nor the country
to plant tears: highways stretch across the horizon
and beyond them – the ocean;
burly kids play football, play guitars
on the sun-lit campus lawns;
and I remember that young bearded poet
sitting under the shade of the Southern Pacific locomotive,
fifty years ago at the exact same spot,
mourning similar losses, but hopeful and ecstatic
over his scepter of a sunflower.

I wish I could still believe in California’s
and poetry’s power to lessen pain.