Sylvia
sylvia
was it really you
those last weeks of your life?
from the first wide-eyed disbelieving horror
at the ice-killer in your womb
but you were still strong then,
strong sylvia, shouting, your blonde hair swinging,
throwing pillows at the nurses
when they tried to move you painfully to a chair
and in the end you broke their ignorance and stayed
regally in bed as they wheeled you to the lift,
laughing behind your hand
then, in the sad green-tree-shaded room of the hospice
you melted, day by day, down to your skin.
New creatures in you took shape
and when I looked, you were
a just-hatched chick
tiny, white, and so beautiful
the fair hair matted to the skull,
the fragile claws occasionally waving
as you wove a dream or memory
your gaze of speechless innocence
I shall never forget
I had not thought there was such innocence left in you
you who were always
so wise in your wildness
in the sweet sick room
where patients coughed or retched or bleeped their bleepers
you whispered the secrets of your transformations
to our deaf ears
yesterday you were
a bird with open beak spreadeagled on the pillow
then you became
a leaf
just pulsing in the daylight
the hair-like veins murmuring in your white arm
while death licked at your stalk, hour by hour,
so that at last
you could fly
Copyright © Helen Dymond | Year Posted 2020
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