Portrait of My Mother as a Dried Sunflower
       

The round shape of you
no longer round,
bent in on yourself
as if you are trying to find your way
back to the place you began.
You smell of dust
and still that scent
of only you.
I cannot see what you were
in what I have before me,
though in dreams you still stand
tallest in the field.
Every day a little
more of you
is gone. You are
beautiful.
You are so beautiful.
At the center,
a constellation of seeds
never planted.

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Copyright © 2017 Pauletta Hansel All rights reserved
from Palindrome
Dos Madres Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission