Winter
By Elizabeth Haukaas
From her white sea my mother, tethered
to this shore by tubes draining out
as if there were something left to tap,
lifts a glassine hand. In what world
should that gesture make the heart leap?
The days pass, it’s the last October she’ll know.
I sit on the edge of her bed, talk of spring.
There should be more to say.
to this shore by tubes draining out
as if there were something left to tap,
lifts a glassine hand. In what world
should that gesture make the heart leap?
The days pass, it’s the last October she’ll know.
I sit on the edge of her bed, talk of spring.
There should be more to say.
No vigil at the end,
she said, after
terminal
and
spread,
as if watching her drift away
would be anything new. By November
her eyes are gray harbors—can they see
I’m here every day? We’ve never
been so close, when she goes hollow
Elizabeth Haukaas received the Walt McDonald First-book award for her full- length collection: Leap . Her work has appeared in numerous journals and won numerous awards, including First Place in New Letters and New Millennium Writings. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. She raised three children, each with a life-altering disease or two (type 1 diabetes, MS, epilepsy, and bipolar disorder), as a single mother. Her career began in architecture, but she switched sides of the table after 10 years to run her own marketing communications company. She lives and writes in New York City.