Winter

by Myronn Hardy

Fall into that easy silence.
She seems more straw than human beneath cotton blankets.  Never that face   never those tubes
in her mouth like stems severed
from a poisonous tree.
In a procession    we follow
her wheeled bed through
the hall to the steel
box of the elevator.
I notice winter in your hair    never
winter but now winter.
Years earlier    another
procession among mourning
nuns at night.  Waterfalls
fell into each other.
What I feel is ending.
I’m turning away from ending.