Patricia Behrens

White Death

Cover me with iris, baby’s breath,

white oleander.  Cover me with owl feathers.

I do not want rough pine above my eyes,

the ache of bones, the slow leach to mineral.

I want to leave my shucked bones behind

clean as shed snakeskin on rocks

empty as a moth cocoon on a branch.

I want to fly up like a spark from fire embers.

Tell me that fire and light are one,

that after the fall, there was reconciliation.

Tell me that the scythe is a pure ribbon of light,

that inside the black cowl there is only white flame.

Let me join the bright light and last

longer than stars, longer than the universe.

Let my fly upward from white oleander

rising on owl feather wings.

                                                                                                

*

At 97, Crossing Over

Limbs frozen

deep    in a reclining chair 

a polar explorer   lost 

fallen through an ice bridge

trapped in a crevasse

his dispatches garbled

single words   white silences

his eyes   glacial   

fixed on nothing   or something

we can’t see

as we lean in

toward the mumbling

oh     oh     oh

old Irish tenor that he is

he ramps up into song—

oh what a beautiful morning

*

Into the Dark

I dream I’ve drifted, weightless into darkness.

I feel myself floating in incense-perfumed air

see light and shadow shift across the sheets

hear mourners coming nearer, humming hymns.

You stroke my skin to wake me back to sunlight

and, happy I’ve awoken, you hold my hand.

But everything to which your touch ties me

seems flat, faded, receding, ephemeral.

Sleep seduces me again and I surrender,

drop deeply into its dark envelope—where  

I feel myself received, wrapped in warm robes

and, secretly smiling, I release your hand.

© Patricia Behrens

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