Those final moments before death,
when body and bones are
pitched to the precipice
with footprints of suffering,
her heart slapped slower and slower until blood,
lured by the weight of gravity,
settled in hollow clefts like spilt mercury.
I stood bedside,
drooped like a wilted sunflower,
my tears, in rivulets,
dropping to her sweat-slicked brow.
I tried to breathe,
but grief, lodged in small vessels,
suffocated like stones in my throat —
and there was nothing I could do,
the wound too freshly stitched.
(Dedicated to my wife Pamela, who died October 17, 2006)
