Lionsgate

As the sun set,

On the eve of my mother’s birthday,

She took her last breath

At the very same minute she took her first,

Seventy-three years before.

Her heart stopped

And her body surrendered to the galactic spiral.

She left through the Lionsgate,

The portal of her birth and her death.

I followed closely behind,

Holding her familiar hand.

The worlds of the living and the dead became one

As we traveled through the veils.

June bugs, ancestors dressed in emerald green garb,

Greeted us on our crossing.

Mourning doves cried.

Bumble bees burrowed into purple clover.

Black-eyed Susans stared.

Summer boiled over with heat and with color

While death’s midnight doubles danced in the shadows.

When I felt Autumn’s cold breath

On the back of my neck

I stepped back over the threshold

And released my mother’s hand.

She reached through the branches

Of an old chestnut tree.

Five long pendant leaves fluttered,

Waving good-bye.

Catherine Brooks, 2021