Intense Sense

            A couple days ago, I was thinking of my sister Anne and the 66 days I shared with her at the end of her life.   A few scenes presented themselves to me:  the vivid green changing to yellow of the trees against the North Carolina blue sky outside the skilled nursing facility where she was dying.  (She never got to see the beauty of the wooded area across the street nor the gaggle of migrating geese out on the lawn.)  I remembered driving on the busy divided highway between The Marilyn House and Kindred Hospital—not the driving so much as the pre-grieving and the isolation of living alone, out of a suitcase, in an unfamiliar city.  I also remember the well-shaded street that wound around First Presbyterian Church just a few blocks from downtown Greensboro.

            And so I came up with this untitled poem, cherishing memories of my older sister and trying to capture that time in a few lines.

Intense sense:

Loss hotter than the sun,

Lush greens yield

To yellow explosions of tree color

Lit by Carolina sky,

Muffled by afternoon thunder,

Darkened on the day she died.