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Afterwards
July 20, 2006
Lifting my face from
out of my hands
I see that the world
as it was is still there.
But I see too
that my hands
have opened like
two leaves and that
my old sunflower face
is turned towards light.
by Dick Jones of Patteran Pages
Categories: Short Shorts
Dick Jones
qarrtsiluni 
This is very moving, it really speaks to me in my current mood. Thank you.
Oh, wonderful poem, Dick! Wonderful.
At last, Dick, you’ve graced qarrtsiluni with your presence! This is an especially shining gem.
I kept thinking of this poem and its images all day yesterday, Dick. Thank you.
Wow! Many thanks to all four of you. I found it in one of a bundle of old poetry notebooks that had been buried under flotsam for some 13 years & only emerged following our recent house move. I dimly remember writing it very quickly in the meargin of another poem on which I was working very seriously. I thought at the time that it was ‘un petit rien’, but on re-reading it the other day it resonated. I’m glad to be able to share it with others.
The way you present this scene twice, once from the inside, once from the outside, perhaps a subjective and objective view, yes, the world is remarkably still here, yes, your face is turned towards the sun of illumination like a sunflower, in so few lines, is nothing short of superb.
I really like this. Simple, yet meaningful.
There is something Japanese in the sweet roundness of this. I love your ‘old sunflower face’. In the poem, that is.
“and that my old sunflower face
is turned toward light.”
this turn of phrase in particular feels very close to me somehow, and the poem as a whole clearly speaks of a very positive spiritual development. i think it was ibn al arabi who wrote of the ‘prayer of the heliotrope’ that keeps turning towards ‘the light.’ but this little poem of yours says it all, succinctly.