Summer of Grief - Poems (Online Chapbook)

Summer of Grief

It's been 3 years

and I'm reminded, again,

of the stark hospital white

and antiseptic stench

that would soon prove

how little I knew

about death

or what it meant ---

long white corridors

that stretch forever,

like a nightmare,

stretch to nothing.

I don't recall much, only

tubes, and the inhuman

wheeze of the

respirator.

Then learning,

after lunch,

she's gone. Like

a dropped knife

clattered on a hard

linoleum floor ---

then, stunned

silence.

It was May

and the heat,

oppressive, wavered

under the sun and

bounced off every

reflective surface.

We all climbed

into cars

and followed

the procession line

to the burial,

where some words

were half-said, and a hole

was hacked into the

soil. My

mind

was elsewhere

when they lowered her

coffin, to be sealed

with dirt forever.

Death, I could not grasp ---

then, it was over.

We all went

back home,

back to life.

❋ ❋ ❋

Only a couple days

before the hospital and

the tubes and death,

she brought a pot

of pink geraniums to

our house;

a mid-

spring gift.

My mother

told me later