I'm stunned by death's absense,
by the flesh that remains, changed and yet hardly so.
I try to pretend the body's a pod or insect shell,
but attending the body after death
I see the body with all its attributions
for the first time, totally honest -
a time to satisfy that final curiosity,
the long gaze that reveals a life compressed, unalterable.
Beyond the window, rain falls. Streets below
shine like a untied black ribbon.
When my mother died, I was the one
part nurse, part daughter. I caught her last heartbeat
with my fingertips, knowing that the lungs
fall a few beats after, then breath empties them.
From long experience, I stood at the moment just before
and stroked her hair
as life moved through her as it always does -
pulling itself up through the ankles
through the bruised aorta
taking the heartbeat along, gathering the last
lungfull of air and leaving nothing, all this
up through the jaw and, at the moment life breaks free,
out the open eyes. The hands respond,
as if the body wasn't robbed, but had been clinging and let go.
I don't believe in death.
Even when the body mottles, even
in its closed casket, I see the body I have touched,
staring at it as I work. Only my fingers
retain the memory
of my memory. This compression is good:
it makes room for all the dead I know and don't know,
the familiar dead and the dead yet to be born.
(c)1999 by Modern Poetry Association
All Rights Reserved
