Another Hospice Death

You are slipping away
again.
You, the countless shifter
of faces and lives.
You are ebbing out of
consciousness again.
Going to that place
inside your form,
that place of quiet rest
and stillness.

Your face is becoming
the same again.
On yet another body,
it looks remarkably the same.
Your eyes roll up inside
their sockets.
Your mouth hangs open,
breathing from the chest -
almost gasping.

Your skin gets cold
and then hot
again and again and again.
And, it looks and feels
like tallow again.

And them, all of them
that have come to hold
your hand and
tell you that they love you,
they are all in pain
and so unsure, again.
You have pulled so inside
yourself
that you are unfamiliar
to them
and they are scared.

I have seen you pull
inside and leave
a thousand, thousand
times and it is always
the same.

Again, and again, and
again.

And yet,
you will appear anew
again and again and again
in the unfolding of yellow
daffodil flesh
in the spring
and in the
rattling cry of the
newborn child.