A poem I wrote after the recent death of my 92 year old father pre-Covid.
The week before he died I visited him every day
Fussing
turning off the lights
Bullying him into eating and drinking
Until I let him be
He didn’t want the fuss
Sitting with him till he was sick of me
All this waiting
This hard waiting
So what is it you need to say when there is nothing left to say
When your living body is coming to an end
When you no longer care about everything you should care about
What is this life that is memory upon memory laid down
And those memories hazed
It is now time to dig the clods of earth and bury
the black box now lowered into the neat earth hole
I pick up some clods
With my bare hands
Pink skin
On bare clay
Throwing this earth onto the black casket
Your shell lying still
Your spirit clean peeled away
We all take our turn in this way
()
Love Maxine.