Poem by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

On The Walk To The Hospital, Death                         


I saw it
    mired in the mess of clothes
    the homeless left under an oak — 
old,  hunchbacked. 
         
All silver 
    & grisaille 
         as the fog lifted, tearing
            mist- ribboned streamers 
                        on rooves.
Saw it 
    in the needle, deep in the back
        of his hand.  My love’s.  
        Fentanyl dripping 
        no pain, 
        no pain 
        in his vein,
        
& in the still life 
    the ward’s window reflected:
        an old woman bent over 
    her husband, hand in his hair.


I saw it.  It faced us --
             nonchalant — 
        there, at the foot of the bed, 
whistling softly through its teeth.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf , Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry for 2001, and  A New Hunger – an ALA Notable Book. Her poetry was featured on Poetry Daily, The Academy of American Poets‘ website, on Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” and in Orion, Georgia Review, Ploughshares and Harvard Review. The editor of four anthologies and a Pushcart Prize recipient, she taught at Sarah Lawrence College, UCSB, and teaches at the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College, in Boston.  

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