There was a barred owl call, for long minutes “Who cooks for You?”
and the little white dog, turning his terrier head to the sound,
raising his whiskered nose, howling in reply.
Later Jupiter and Mars shone brighter than the satellites.
I suppose it was because of my mother’s spreading light.
I am winning at canasta,
I am losing my way as the eldest daughter.
The harness, I mean crown rides heavy.
How could we know that she meant what she said in that late afternoon,
salty, so often her favorite tongue.
How could we heed her announcement, “I am done”
It rang hollow to our intentions.
She made up her mind and a few hours hence, even
before we would finish our farewell, she took her last breath.
My fingers pressed against the fleeting pulse in her femoral artery.
It stilled, and I turned into stone ledge under a river of tears.
Two men took three hours to drive thirty miles to carry her body away.
Sister and I stepped out under Saturn, watched the white panel van leave.
Cracks in the concrete were weedy with crabgrass and dandelions,
and I prayed for stray seeds to fill crevices freshly cleaved.
Green invites the steamrollers to pause.
Green hails the heart to keep beating.
Green conjugates the cold sky with golden rod and aster pollen.
Green swallows orderly days, regurgitates minutes into a trust walk.
There is little left to do but let one foot follow its mate.
I am no orphan, now my own matriarch.
I’ve been nudged closer to the ancestors.
I am a nurse cedar feeding her saplings, feeding the forest.
The old ones suggest I push a new growth ring around us all.
I feel swollen, I feel wizened, too timid to allow what normal demands.
Scarlet dread niggles at new space yawning around us.
We float resigned within this entropy of loss.
There will be more broken sleep.
There will be more family feuds.
There will be more bread and butter.
There will be forgiveness.
There will be despair.
There will be honey in the wound.
Today, her four poster replaced the hospice bed,
The breathing machine, bedside commode, wheeled side table,
nebulizer all left on Wednesday.
We are in the stage of grief when we long for wafts of autumn rain.
May they soothe our tender edges with her love of this season.
May they conjure memory; the crumble of Yankee cornbread,
the neighbor who handstitched the blue quilt, and
remember to plant sultanas in the fall garden, then pansies.
If the chickadees continue to spread their staccato banter across frosted air,
we may find our way through this long shadow.
A compass homed in John Whitcomb Riley and Scrabble.
Saturn rose less steely tonight. His beam
as steady as my attention for her footsteps on the stairs.
Our vigil has shifted to imitate a spreading mist in fresh light.
Our new imperative, to meet the mystery of the moment,
as if she still sits beside us on the corduroy couch,
lips pressed to the rim of her steamy morning mug.
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