Tricia Marcella Cimera- A Poem

Galaxy

 

My father is in his bed.

He has died and the Hospice

Nurse is washing him.

I stay close.

She tells me my father

was very sweet. I agree.

He was, but not always.

He was many, many things.

She doesn’t know.

She didn’t know him.

What he meant to me.

I help her move him so

she can bathe his back.

Then she washes

his hands, slowly.  Later

the funeral home people come

in a hearse, with a stretcher.

My mother, my sister, we say

goodbye to my father.

I follow the stretcher out the door,

down the walkway,

watch him slide into the hearse.

You see,

I was always the little planet

that circled him. He was the sun

of my world. I want to stay

near him. But he moves away,

headed towards a clean, new

galaxy.

Tricia Marcella Cimera is an obsessed reader and lover of words. Her work is, or will be, in these diverse places: the Buddhist Poetry Review, Foliate Oak, Hedgerow, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Mad Swirl, Prairie Light Review, Reverie Fair, Silver Birch Press, Stepping Stones and Yellow Chair Review.  Tricia volunteers locally, believes there's no place like her own backyard, and has traveled the world.  She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois/in a town called St. Charles/by a river named Fox.