The Newly Dead

Do not ask for much. For instance,

my mother here at my shoulder

telling a story I remember

hearing before about so and so

and such and such. We have grown

so close since she passed. I call

from time to time to see what’s up.

She answers with the same low note

followed by a high. Hell-ooohhh,

the second part comes down a half pitch,

and I realize when I talk, she can’t hear

in her left ear. Signals transferred

via the aids she wears. A miracle,

superlative, begins to thin

as years wear the stain of age.

Here she is in the room where we put

her five days ago, making sure

she had everything but a kitchen.

The hospital bed tilts up for her legs,

the bathroom holds no shower. Instead

nurses come and take her for spa day.

They spray and she seems willing.

If, in hindsight, the heart I wore

was less than kind in its thoughts

towards the end she lets that go.

She cozies up to space-time. Here

we are in the same building, a beehive

full of elderly, God bless them,

souls. I perform those rituals

she declares unnecessary,

all the while multi-tasking.

When I hang up, she is gone.