Lavender

The nurses had scattered it around the room
A gentle touch of humanity
To ease the days that never seemed to end
Neither by your side, clammy hands clasped
Nor at night watching street shadows wash
Across the bedroom walls,
Each one a sympathetic memory.

The swiftness in which the black storm stripped
You was like death itself.
Hard to imagine the steep valley of your abdomen was
once a swollen mountain of my making.


I wanted to lock the doors from the inside
When from the corners of their conscience
Forgotten faces surrounded your bed
Like imitation angels. Where was they at
Your 60th, in that sleek orange gown,
The black storm a continent away.

Cards with country landscapes, lush green fields,
fish full rivers, sun spilt and clean
Encircle your bed like out of reach wishes
Loved and signed by cousins
Who recoil when you pass stools into the
Bag beside them.

The nurses placed it under your pillows
And when death swallowed your last breath
I removed it, so the memory of the storm
And the stench it left behind would bury itself
Into the corners of the conscience of which
They would surely border, once the last of
The soil was thrown.