Last Visit

Stark, white walls in a antiseptic room

Computerized monitors of life, their silent beeping tones

It was the last time I saw, your black pain riddled body

You were not my grandmother, just a hallucinatory spirit, curled in a fetal posture

Anticipating father time

I gazed into a face lined with rough living

The cotton fields of Little Rock

To the hospital corridors of Wilmington, as a domestic

I stroked your callused hand, an angel in white

Administered medication, which you promptly spit out

Eyes closed, all the while, you, ready to die

With a smile

Four days later, in your shallow sleep, you passed away

Buried, to the hymn, of Amazing Grace.

4 April 1994