After Extubation
But she left us and broke the family and the sorrow was released
and we saw its wings and saw it fly a thousand ways into the hills…
Homecoming
Marilynne Robinson
I’ve known all along her accumulation of used
and tired things was a staving off of all
the used and tired things she’d thought
she’d left behind forever but were really dragged
in a sack that never lacked for holes and yet
performed miracle after miracle by nothing ever
being kicked or elbowed or pushed out or through
for space or love or neglect. In deed, her sorrow was this
sack she dared and mended when the dark closed in
and she needed it’s ironic space. It was like the space
a baby makes between the wall of the uterus
and the placenta, a constant relying but never
throughout all those rapid heartbeats living like
it could all end the moment it prolapses
and all the lights and sounds, like the abrupt
shutting down at carnival are suddenly stuffed
into a hole and closed, just closed, forever. I suppose
she gathered her sorrows that way, her whole life
dragging. And the day she opened it the creatures
all her stuff had become at first wouldn’t move. Couldn't.
They were by now something else entirely
and the light hurt them enough to shrink them.
Still, they knew her by her smell and recovered
enough when she reached in to bite her but only
out of being cold, because the space was small,
and as she pulled away the blanket of her life
got large and she waited and watched as it drifted
up on a wind and all of it, every small legged thing,
nosed in her lap like puppies just born, wet and eyeless,
and soon throughout the days of intubation, a knee was gained
nosed in her lap like puppies just born, wet and eyeless,
and soon throughout the days of intubation, a knee was gained
and soon an ankle, as they made their way out, off
into the wide wide furiously wide free dying.
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