Here you’re dying and all
I can think of is birth
             and how you are,
as ever, more

than meets the eye: both
laboring mother and stubborn
infant laboring too,
             tunneling toward

what isn’t wheeling
seagulls, not a hammered silver
             bay—toward what’s nothing
I can name:

so much everything
             and all at once,
                          all particle, all wave.

Listen to this poem:

For My Mother, Dying, a poem by Catherine Abbey Hodges

Photo used under CC.