Home Coming
I can’t believe you are here--
her first words to me,
the first day of the last days,
looking up from the bed that swallowed her.
Words I keep coming back to.
Couldn’t believe I would come?
But where else would I be?
Where else could I be?
There was no choice in it.
No idea. No plan.
Her dying wakens my inner salmon,
inner homing pigeon, inner whale.
Coded to return here.
Brush, brush her hair.
Wet her lips.
Lie beside her and count her slowing breaths.
In the end as in the beginning,
she becomes my entire world, and
like a child, I imagine I am hers,
while she does what a mother does,
and lets go.
Homecoming first appeared in The Long Arc of Grief, Finishing Line Press, (2019).
Laura has two chapbooks with Finishing Line Press, Lost in Tall Grass (2014) and The Long Arc of Grief (2019), as well as numerous journal publications. Laura also serves on the board of the Henry Miller Library, where she created and co-hosted (with the late and greatly missed Peter Serchuk) Lines Online, a 2020 a virtual poetry series. She is also a special projects docent at Tor House, where she recently designed the program “Poetry and Nature” in collaboration with Monterey Audubon board member, Fred Hochstaedter. Laura is also a (mostly-retired) lawyer who devoted her career to supporting community college districts throughout California. www.lauraschulkind.com.
I can’t believe you are here--
her first words to me,
the first day of the last days,
looking up from the bed that swallowed her.
Words I keep coming back to.
Couldn’t believe I would come?
But where else would I be?
Where else could I be?
There was no choice in it.
No idea. No plan.
Her dying wakens my inner salmon,
inner homing pigeon, inner whale.
Coded to return here.
Brush, brush her hair.
Wet her lips.
Lie beside her and count her slowing breaths.
In the end as in the beginning,
she becomes my entire world, and
like a child, I imagine I am hers,
while she does what a mother does,
and lets go.
Homecoming first appeared in The Long Arc of Grief, Finishing Line Press, (2019).
Laura has two chapbooks with Finishing Line Press, Lost in Tall Grass (2014) and The Long Arc of Grief (2019), as well as numerous journal publications. Laura also serves on the board of the Henry Miller Library, where she created and co-hosted (with the late and greatly missed Peter Serchuk) Lines Online, a 2020 a virtual poetry series. She is also a special projects docent at Tor House, where she recently designed the program “Poetry and Nature” in collaboration with Monterey Audubon board member, Fred Hochstaedter. Laura is also a (mostly-retired) lawyer who devoted her career to supporting community college districts throughout California. www.lauraschulkind.com.
