To Plant a Sunflower

The vines of Mabel’s memory branched and bloomed,

A crash, a famine, wars and booms,

Black-plumed hats and veiled perfume.

One hundred years she pruned them before hanging up the tools.

I wished she had told me more.

Her daughter, down the hall, lay in diseased defeat.

Speaking pained her, remembering was incomplete.

Moments of clarity only encouraged her to retreat

To the garden in her mind where memories blur and bleed.

“Stop coming here. I’m not your mother. I’ve never seen you here before.”

She lay dying, troubled, tangled in her waking dream.

We gathered ‘round, reading too much from her fever speech.

The morphine kicked in, a final wakened gleam.

And we cried, angry at our own relief.

Then the will, and I wondered whom she really cared for.

My mother, generation three, weeded out the memories.

Replaced them with the buzz of Bloody Marys,

And sank quietly into the glare of T.V.

Wasting time until the end of her pixelated reverie.

I pressed my face to the window pane, wanting more and more.

I, the youngest one. The sprouted seed.

Hoarding moments with frantic greed,

Afraid of losing time, afraid of noxious weeds.

I cannot lose them, my memories -thus my being - are all I need.

I can only dream to know the lives of the women who came before.