Sadie Dreams of Her Mother Walking Into the Ravine

I agree: it must be the seasons.

You think you are seeing,

But you are not.

Hard to imagine either of us that young,

yet it happened.

Listening to her family in the next room

while laying twisted in fever,

never again to hear a bell

without hearing the bell.

The package left, suddenly in the night,

unopened--

with some relief, you watched her walk away

and knew not to stop her.

Soft and letting go

            through the moss to the leaves above--
easing into the water, eyes open.