The night is still, wrapped in July’s steamy blanket.
The frogs have long since stopped their hymns
to the lethal shadows flitting across the moon.
Today they told me my mother is dying.
The striking talons of abuse stretched
over her mind as she grew up;
and though she sang and louder sang,
they closed around her throat.
Now, in a time of corona and social media,
she is borne away non-virally.
Last time I saw her, she seemed to seek death—
wheeling her chair into corners, desperate to leave the choir,
though she loved us still.
I’m left aggrieved but strangely light,
as if the dead were lifting me after them,
toward the moon.
Lorna Wood lives in Auburn, Alabama, with her husband, cat, and violin. She is a grammar Dalek and refuses to believe “adulting” is a word. Her poetry has appeared in Angel Rust (Best of the Net nominee), Coastal Shelf, Escape Wheel (great weather for MEDIA), Poetry South (Pushcart nominee), and Luminous Echoes (poems shortlisted for Into the Void’s poetry contest), among others. She has also published fiction, creative nonfiction, and scholarly essays.