POETRY
Photos
by Gillian McConnell
Photo 1.
Surrounded by flowers,
I hold lilies and wear white satin.
My mother said I was too young.
She wears a flowerless smile.
Living with you was like
swimming in a Zen pond,
until you started to drown.
Photo 2.
Your sunken eyes, louder than any
caw of crows, stare up from
the hospice pillow.
Your bruised arms are wrapped
around our child. The bruises
wrapped around me
are transparent.
Yesterday, a year later,
while skipping past the rusty gates
of a damp, leaf-strewn graveyard,
our daughter pointed her finger and said.
"That's heaven"
Gillian McConnell, a designer and painter from the UK, is also a co-author of Beyond The Broken Heart: Accompanying The Bereaved (Cheneliere McGraw Hill). Presently she has a book of poems being published called Rooms. She lives in Montreal.
Copyright 2006, Gillian McConnell