Vintage Colorado Poetry Poem of the Week October 11, 2004
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				After childhood on a ranch along the Cache la Poudre River, Jean Milne Gower lived in Denver and wrote for the Rocky Mountain News.
					Painted Pods Dusty and weather-whipped, from vacant lots She took the dried seed-holders of sunflowers And painted them--- Bright crimson did she paint them, Bronzed and gilded at the edges. Then she placed them with weird, silvered milk-       weed pods And iridescent leaves And purple grasses. "Are they not beautiful?" she asked. But they, the sunflowers, who had once been dressed In golden rays aurioled about black pompoms, They must have felt like unto painted women Who use---without due reticence---by daylight Lipstick and rouge to lure the gaze of men.                                    --Jean Milne Gower From The Kaleidoscope: Little Pictures of Colorado by Jean Milne Gower. Published by The Miles & Dryer Printing Co. Denver, Colorado. Copyright, 1923. Reproduction by Vintage Colorado Poetry, non-profit literary archive, for scholarly purpose: 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act [last 20 year rule].