She sits outside before dawn,
thinking of death among abounding life.
She sees bats zigzagging to catch one last moth
before retiring into day’s light.
Birds fly this way and that,
winging towards dawn destinations.
Nighttime insects head for daytime beds,
hoping to live through another sun cycle,
undiscovered. There are meows from cats,
varied singings of various birds,
barks from distant dogs, and her own breathing…
But no movement from the rabbit pen.
The rabbit is dead. No spark left.

She doesn’t understand casualness of death.
Can’t hide her mind from its empty embrace.
Is it so wrong to mourn totality of loss?
There’s pain in life, no denying that fact,
death is supposed to be the pain reliever;
and it is, for the dead, not for the living.
It’s the awareness of loss of their lost time
that the living find hard to bear.

She sits outside in another dawn.
Had to shoo a spider away
to sit on the picnic table top.
The sun is just slanting up the side yard,
dappling the black-eyed Susan crown
on her personal, glassy-eyed sun.
A pink hibiscus is about to bloom,
the sprinkler is going, Bug-kitten
is spazzing around the yard.
Her sunflower towers are dried husks,
yellow leaves are scattered
on the ground under the backyard tree.
She still thinks of death,
even as she feels more alive.

Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen
© Copyright 9/17/04