The Beautiful Awful

My mom would have turned 77 today. It's been nearly 3 years since she died and I still miss her every day. I wrote this poem a few months after her death, shared it with 3 people and put it away. My sister reminded me of it tonight and I think I'm now far enough away from the intensely emotional last days of her life to put it out there.

My mom was so loud and gregarious. So full of life and energy. She didn't go out quietly. I stayed by her side those last 24 hours. It was the greatest privilege and the most terrible thing I've ever known.


The Beautiful Awful

I witnessed the birth of my mother
A grueling 24-hour labor

In the days leading up to her death, time walked backwards

She was incessantly chatty like a schoolgirl
On her last car ride, she turned her unlotioned face to the sun because "who cares about skin cancer"
She unloaded all of her stuff

When hospice arrived, she pulled me close and pierced me in her gaze, begging to know what they were saying
How much longer?
What are the signs?

A doula knows these things:
How to recognize the breathing changes
How to reply to the pleading "Help me"
How to make a mother more comfortable

I knew nothing
Futilely plumping pillows, rolling the dead weight from side to side, promising everything would be okay
When everything was awful

I just wish I had let her take her shirt off
So she could go out as she came in
Inching her tumor-ravaged shell through an invisible passage
Into something that is—that must be—
Beautiful.

© 2019 Amy Bordoni

A miracle how life goes on

Awhile ago I started a poem that resurfaced unexpectedly this weekend. It was better than I remembered, and with a few tweaks, I decided to call it done. (That's the trouble with poems. You can rework them to death and never finish anything.)

I started this after witnessing the near-death (or serious injury) of 2 pedestrians in the same week during my walking commute from work to the train and marveled at how easily any of us could meet our end a million times a day, but miraculously go on. Living so acutely aware of what could happen is a thin edge to skate as it could surely drive one crazy with worry. But somehow these brushes with mortality just keep me more aware of how wondrous life really is.


Dodging

It’s a miracle to make it through the day without dying.

Jogger, with her earphones in, darts across the intersection on a red light
Car screeches stop within inches
Driver jumps out crying and hugs her
Gaping-mouthed pedestrians look on

Train passes, gates down, man rushes out
Then jumps back within inches
As horn blares from the other direction
Commuters gasp and shake

Airplane touches down on the tarmack—
Eyes open after the sutures close—
Thief doesn’t pull the trigger—
100-year-old maple shading the bedroom rides out the storm again—

Every day the whole world crumbles
At someone else’s feet.

Inexplicably, your heart beats on.

© 2019 Amy Bordoni

friday haiku

evening air heavy
with lilac, honeysuckle
top cocktail of spring

inspired by looking up

waning crescent left behind

a fingernail moon

hangs in the blue sky

of morning

like a lost child

not yet aware

that Ursa Major and Ursa Minor

and little Cassiopeia

have disappeared