I fell asleep
and remembered
my mother’s dying.
She lay head high
in the tilted bed
a sled for the long slow slide
into sleep.
The sheets,
white,
a field of snow
drifting and silencing.
Deer
thin as arrows
hungry on the hill
that was my mother’s body
their ribs a death harp
playing a slow final dirge
sinking into sleep.
How hard it is to wake up
exhausted and cold
the mother at the bedroom door
saying, “It’s time.”
Clocks with jangling bells
a lifetime of alarms.
How hard it is to fall asleep,
the angel at the door saying,
“It’s time.”
1990