By Susan Browne

One million earths could fit inside the sun
The thought of a million earths

makes me want to be a bee falling asleep inside a flower
It’s a fact: sometimes while gathering nectar bees get tired

& put their three pairs of legs over their five eyes
to block the sun which is halfway through its journey

of ten billion years
My mother loved sunsets at the beach

I remember once in Santa Barbara
our chairs close together on the sand

There’s no way to fact-check this
or that we chewed Juicy Fruit gum

& talked about things we’d never shared before
or that I kept looking at the freckles

on her knees because they made me
feel peaceful as a bee dreaming inside a dahlia

A billion years since that day with my mother
or seems like it

Her middle name was Marie
I brought a boombox to the church to play Ave Maria

A cold morning although the sun was shining
on the only known planet in the universe where life exists.

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Susan Browne is the author of Buddha’s Dogs, Zephyr, and Just Living. Her fourth poetry collection, Monster Mash, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2025. Awards include prizes from Four Way Books, the Catamaran Poetry Prize, and the James Dickey Poetry Prize. She lives in Northern California where she teaches poetry workshops online. http://www.susanbrownepoems.com