Maintenance

Kate Russell via Compfight

I wrote a poem to help feel the loss of my friend's mother, a friend of mine, too.

Maintenance

That afternoon he paused
to lean over his chainsaw and
refill it with gas, oil;
he sharpened,
then tightened the chain;
brushed the dust
from the air filter;
cleared the spark plug.
In the sudden silence,
crickets whispered
from the shade
of the thick grass.
Golden light. A
kingbird paused
on the branch
of a dead elm.
That evening, a mother
would die,
while morphine dulled
the pain in her body.
Her eyes closed
to this loved world,
beyond repair.

-- Steve Peterson