Photography © Luis Lázaro Tijerina

 

Sunflowers in Late Summer

Piano keys slumber musically in the heat.
August is seared with sunlight and sunflowers
on this desolate afternoon.
You are not here in this country,
but in another room…
The window filled with a field of sunflowers
where soldiers are shot in the belly in the Ukraine.

Freedom is a toll extracted from the heavens.
Here, no one breathes freely
except by the schedule of work; the price of love
squeezed into a timeclock’s break.
That scream for help from eternity,
the message of time
on a cell phone, the limit on intimacy for
the minutes one buys,
a world cluttered with disjointed images.
The voyeurism on Facebook,
an intangible world of posts and cyber words and emojis
where the water of life divides into death.

I see the sunflowers fade in a photo.
Unknowable, this evening will not fade,
a memory lost in the glare of the sun.
From the fields you go to the beach;
in seaweed along the shore,
among the stones where your friend
draws you near to her
in an unspoken rhythm on the dance floor
with a final beautiful shrug.

 

Luis Lázaro Tijerina was born in Salina, Kansas. Mr. Tijerina has a Master of Art degree in history, concentration being military history and diplomacy. He is a published author of military theory, short stories, essays and poetry. Mr. Tijerina resides in Kansas.