Sunflowers

Carol Dorf

On the way to the grave, you wish for a mother. The Egyptians had Hathor with her deep-set eyes and high cheekbones. My mother keeps having problems reaching her mother on the phone, no matter how frequently we go over the dates. She wants someone to drive her there for a visit. Her father visited the cemetery on the day he died to say Kaddish for his parents. She doesn’t ask for that. When I told my teenager I feared dementia, she asked, “Do you want me to euthanize you?” Thank God rain is predicted, a promise to end the year’s drought. I told her, “No.”

Sunflowers in the vase, one with a red center.


Carol Dorf’s poetry has been published in Spillway, Sin Fronteras, Antiphon, Composite, About Place, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, Maintenant and elsewhere. She is poetry editor of Talking Writing and teaches mathematics at Berkeley High School.

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