2 MOTHER DEATH POEMS

On the other side of the poem I wrote:

Was it easy to die? The birds know.

Seeking the double life 

I practice letting go.
Can the dead communicate with the living?
I remember saying to my aunt, 

She is already dead inside. 

The long vowels slide off the tongue.
A voice stitched inside the throat of memory
The mother – daughter distance, 

The past is always a graveyard, 

thoughts, the burden of existence.

Stones sing their way toward the ocean.
Nothing persists like silence, 

the end of the room,

the beginning of the world. 

28 March 1995

It's the 6 month anniversary 

of my mother's death. 

She is still with me.

Death brushes my shoulders. 

My truck spins out of control, 

slick roads, & the gnawing hunger 

of precipitous cliffs.

But she is driving me.

So for now, we are safe.

28 March 1995

rev. slightly 16/11/2015