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Posts Tagged ‘dying’

Last Days

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 20, 2025| 4 Comments »




In the end, my father couldn’t
raise his arm to feed himself.
Couldn’t sit. Could barely open
his eyes. But damn, could he love.
He could still curl his thick
fingers around my hand.
Could still say my name.
And though I had never known
a moment when I was not sure
this man loved me, in those last days
I knew it more. Somehow, barely
able to speak, he drenched me
in his devotion. In those last days,
all was reduced to love. Or was it
all was expanded to love? Either
way. Somehow I hadn’t known
how love can take over a body.
A life. The purity of it. The gift.

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Still Lifes from the Gathering on the Day Before She Will Die

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 25, 2024| 11 Comments »


                  for D.B.F.
 
 
The white and blue folds of her sweater.
 
The hand of her daughter on her shoulder.
 
The rain.

The cancer blossoming in her brain.
 
The story of when she did dishes for the dying woman.
 
This dying woman in the home she just built.
 
The glasses lifted high for a champagne toast.
 
The medicine waiting for tomorrow.
 
The snapdragons on the table not yet starting to droop.
 
The song we have sung with her for thirty years.
 
The tears.
 
The missing harmony where her voice would be.
 
The smile on her face as if nothing was missing.
 
As if nothing was lacking.
 
As if she was opening the gate
 
and showing us this, this is the way to walk through.
 

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Actual Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 28, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
 
After the rush and the livewire nerves,
after the work and the crush and the stress
and all that is left is two friends hugging,
we go to the deep green grass at the edge
of town where gravestones are made of granite
and cliffs are made of sandstone,
and we all know which will erode first.
 
We lie in the grass beside the grave
and let the earth do all the work
of holding. The aspen leaves
tremble in the wind. It’s a roar,
but still it feels quiet. I am more
cliff than gravestone. Still falling apart.
Which means I am still human enough
 
to feel the afternoon sun on my skin,
how warm, how good. Still human enough
to thrill at how soft the grass is, how clear blue
the sky, how gold the petals of the sunflowers
in the vase beside the gray headstone.
Still human enough to love the scent of summer
as it, too, comes to visit amongst the graves.  

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One Last Night

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 21, 2021| 10 Comments »

 
his breathing shallow
still he laughs, says I love you—
this bright falling star

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Shavasana

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 5, 2017| 2 Comments »

 

 

Once again, the field rehearses how to die.

Some of the grass turns golden first. Some

simply fades into brown. Just this morning,

I, too, lay in corpse pose, practicing

how to let myself be totally held by the earth

without striving, how to meet the day

without rushing off to do the next necessary

or beautiful thing. Soon, the grass will bend

or break, molder or disintegrate. Every year,

the same lesson in how to join

the darkness, how to be unmade, how quietly

we might lean into the uncertainty

of whatever comes next.

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Epistemology

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 28, 2012| 3 Comments »

I knew myself a swirl of ash
swept grayly by the wind
like wings, only without the bird,
like kites without their strings.

And I, who have been dead, tonight
I know myself the moon
with rings around it in the dark.
And I the darkness, too.

But I am also not the dark,
not moon, not ash, not kite,
not anything that can be held,
something beyond the lines.

I know myself a spilling thing,
a raveling, a leak.
Call it blessing, call it luck
the vessel as it breaks.

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