When Everyone Is Sick and I Think of My Mother
The sun rises on the old oak.
The morning crows stop
enroute from roost to landfill,
tatters in the tree.
Breakfast is an hour of love squandered
on pills, oatmeal, herbal tea. I try
to infuse each flake and leaf
with healing instead of crankiness.
Anything will bend under the weight
of daybreak. My mother dying at dawn,
her slow breath warm on my cheek
as she lay in my arms and I turned,
lip to lip, to breathe in her last.
She worried the threads of living
from her body and I could not salvage
the edges. They frayed and tore,
a garment unravelling.
I’m still winding those loose ends
onto a wooden spool I might use
to stitch skin or armour.
I don’t know which.
I haven’t yet found the pattern.
The crows take flight, emptying into sky.
