this is goodbye {poem}

in the end you could not live,

no one can, in the end.


your son went first like a brown otter,

a Mississippi river took him.


over the raw of your face , spirit slip

slipping downstream


pooled in the flux of pupil,

swimming slowly in equations of Pi.


then found- you again

you finding yourself locked up


crying like fragile

breaks cry throughout glass,


' don't leave me ! '

and i did i did leave you say it fast


an hour of time.

what does this mean?


your tidal gown,

pink slippers falling off toes.


the corridors of ill people

in ill fitting clothes.



the cage of your bones,

your fume and fury your fight!



an old woman wrinkle iron

me out but nothing irons out the light.



not the nerve virus, the stinging

nettle palmed in your hands


joint plaster

white lilied fingers, flapper hair


still beautiful.

every visit, i searched your eyes


for yourself.

calling ' you hear me grandma '


body a trembled prairie,

spirit gathering evening light-


i saw it leave each part,

the ankle bone collapsing


the knee agape

the surrender of your organs


to skin,

your spirit moving ever upward


to the eye.

it made me sad to see your piano fingers abandoned.


i stayed close to your face,

like a mother.


if you were to cry

we wanted you to know you were not alone.


finally the whole you was so fine and thin

strained of filament, muscle, bone-


your spirit very pure,

like a teaspoon of rare cream.


soul small child, tipping over the eye,

birthing yourself to death.


body animal burrow, full of baby six times

emptied, moving out now in moving breath


and still as the prehistoric sky.

some time went by



and you died.

this is how it was, and everybody cried.

Maggie May Ethridge
written for my grandmother Elizabeth