DEATH

Am I ready for death?
I sat in my mothers hospital room in a gray pleather chair; the respective place for a visitor or a daughter. She slept and slept the pain away from her back surgery; I waited in silence. Not that death is knocking on either of our doors, but I was compelled to ask myself the question? Am I ready for death or to experience death? Um...NO! Death is funny in hospitals. I rub my mothers head, and think. It lingers in the walls the way drunks hang at corner bars. I feel it everywhere, an institution for recovering health, and this leads me to think of how the human body has this miraculous talent to heal itself. And...the invisible drive to go on. It is the secret human power and when you feel the shimmer of life force, inside you, you know it is not your time.

Death

The essence of what is left--
lingering, singing, laughing;
even in the coffin, her
energy feels like breathing.
Dirt on wood, wings escorting
a soulful journey--
shadows of emotions living
in recesses of quiet mornings.

Is it in death, we find life? Or
in life, we see the invisible?