Bearing witness to your labored last breaths
Loved ones keen and the hospice nurse comforts
A mourning dove lights on the windowsill
Plumps its breast and coos its haunting five-note song
Your eyelids flutter and we all exchange glances
It’s time, and it’s the time of knowing it’s time
Words fail, and in the gap a gift of insight
Each life’s end like a wave spilling on certain shore
Losing its swell and sliding back into the ocean
Adding a measure of pinnacled experience to the deeps
How it caressed the canopy of space-blued sky
How it reflected the roving sun, moon and stars
A prayer then for good in the end
As we approach the beach may we each be
Sweetly open, unbiased, and uncomplicated
So that the rest may simply take care of itself
So that we may all know the grace in dying
The joy in rejoining the depths of our sea
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Copyright Deborah A. McGlauflin, May 17, 2015. All rights reserved.
