As You Lie Dying

As You Lie Dying

Photo: Google Images

As you lie dying,
the shadow of a palm
outside your window
peeps in, enters,
slips across the comforter,
nestles in its folds,
covers your pain.

In the distance
a couple bats tennis balls
back and forth across the net.
No strain.
An easy volley,
back and forth again,
like our ideas,
ricocheting back and forth.
Yours, then mine.
Divergent memories.

One fact we both hold true.
The night earth shook Tehachapi,
our lives were rent.
And nothing evermore
would be the same.

Outside your window now
a murder of crows descends to feed.

This poem is written for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets’ Pub. Tomorrow at Write2Day my prompt will deal with memories. When my sister was dying, we learned how different our recollections of the same events were. Our previously widowed parents married one another when we were both seven. (Her dad, my mom.) The night of their wedding I spent my first night away from the home that we had shared with my grandparents. That night there was a significant earthquake. You can figure out the rest. 

Stop by the Pub and enjoy the poetry, the poets and who knows what else!