White Hyacinths
written by: Jan Sargeant
I’d taken her hyacinths only last week,
papery pointed layered shoots,
promising fragrance, promising Spring,
promising a future not mine to bring
to this chair by a window in a corner
of a room where the fading light of winter
can’t pierce the gloom
my mother died tonight
and in the end, it wasn’t
with a whimper or a cry
but the slow shuffle of stocking feet
across the miles that lay in the no man’s land
between what she knew but didn’t understand
how can an entire lifetime shrivel
into one chair by a window
for those long long days
of bandaged legs weeping their own pains
through the ulcerated remains
of the woman she once was,
not with bang, nor a whimper,
tonight my mother decided to die
left us the whisper of white hyacinths
in a last, quiet sigh
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