My girlfriend, telling of her mother’s
last moments, describes the gaunt
frame they prop on pillows in the living
room, windows they slide open to a view
of mountains behind a curtain of gold leaves.
The cancer has chiseled her features close
to bone, but still she struggles to listen.
Hearing is one of the last senses to go;
and so they shush the relatives
that have come to start chants of ritual
mourning at her side. A son-in-law
slides a bow across a halting serenade
of viola strings. Grandchildren whisper
in her ear, urging her to the crossing.
And at the end, my friend swears
there is a split-second glimpse of wisping
breath— leaving the white-throated body
behind, slight tear like a wing in the air.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Listening to Piazzolla’s Tango Etudes
- Eating Dried Fish With Our Hands
- Encore
- Dear nostalgia,
- What We Look For
- Without Translation
- Heart Weighted With Cares
- Fables
- Tableaux Vivants
- Listening to Chopin’s Prelude in D-flat Major, Op. 28, No. 15
- Fountains
- Dear solitude,
- Nocturne
- Frontispiece
- Landscape, with Notes of Red
- Blue Stone Blues
- Landscape, with a Glimpse of the Soul as it Leaves the Body
- How I Came to Writing
- When does the hunger abate;
- Dear errant winds at dusk,
- Aerogramme
- Dear scarlet-flushed, hydraulic,
- Monday’s News
- Counterpoints
- Landscape, with Traces of Prior Events
- On the Nature of Things
- Spell Against Grey
- Landscape, with Castoffs on the Sidewalk
- Sleepless Ghazal
- Last Call
- Delivery Confirmation
- Landscape, with Early Frost and a Dream Interior
- Campus Elegy
- Petrichor
- Ghazal: Chimerae
- Maguindanao Ghazal
- Insurgent Song
- Paper Ghazal
- Ghazal of the Transcendental
- Hot Lyric
- On the sense of danger or foreboding, the prickling
- Postcard from the Labyrinth
- Hunger
- Debris
- Letter to One Seeking Flight
- Unbelievable Ends
- In the chapel of perpetual adoration,
- Night Rain
- Conversation that Ends with a Dream of Accounting
- Lyric on the Edge of Winter
- Paper Cut #2
- Herald
- Walking
- And once again,
- Prayer Among the Stones
- Call and Response
- Recover
- Dark Prayer
- Song of Snow
- Santa Milagrita
- Song without Strings
- Morning Song
I love how you transmogrified those white-throated sparrow songs (which are, of course, very sad-sounding).
refracting images, and a tender presence.
Beautiful!
Luisa, This is a lovely description of something familiar to me. I have also had this experience. At the time of a death, something lifts away.
Thanks, everyone… It’s been tough finding untrammelled time lately, to come to VN to write (we had the week-long ODU Literary Festival last week, and then guests at home for 4 days since Saturday). So hectic! And therefore I am doubly glad to be writing here.