White curtain by Elizabeth Spires

Poems

November 1999

White curtain

by Elizabeth Spires

Burke

was right!

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Late that afternoon, I lay
on the bed, the wind
blowing through the room.
It was fall, the days gold.

The white curtain, sheer
as a soul, lifting in the wind.
As if a hand, unthinking hand,
disturbed its calm repose.

It fluttered and rose.
Fluttered and rose.
Or did it twist in mortal
agony? I didn’t know.

Unceasing flow!
The everlasting present
passing, forever passing,
through our lives,

the drift and pull of pain
remembered, my name
called out in a dream,
and the question,

Mother, where are you?
The wind saying everything,
nothing that I didn’t already
know: She is dying.

Light. Tears. Breath. Wind.
I watched and could do
nothing as the curtain
rose and fell.

Elizabeth Spires' new book of poems, The Wave-Maker, was published by Norton in July 2008.

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