Teresa, Crossing Over
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Our last visit: her space shrunk to one room on the dementia hall, behind a locked door. A few family photos on the dresser,a smiling Pope Francis on the wall.
I see thoroughbreds galloping in a fieldbehind a split rail fence, chestnut and bay flanks glistening in the August sun.
Her eyes stare straight ahead, as if she could see into the next room – cloud light, and familiar faces around a table, calling her in…
I picture a great blue heron on a rock beside a stream, spreading its full wingspan as if it would lift off,as if it were opening its being to the sun's light.
Her lips are parched; I offer only cracked ice. She asks me:Are we going yet? Then answers: soon now, as if I am no longer there.
Outside the window, the sudden ascent of a tiger swallowtail from the coneflowers, aroma of nectar in its feet. [End Page 265]
Kathleen O'Toole has combined an active professional life in community organizing with writing and teaching. Her poems have appeared in America, Atlanta Review, Christian Century, Cresset, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Poetry East, and Prairie Schooner. Her books include a chapbook, Practice, and Meanwhile, In 2017, she published with three other women writers a collection of poems, In the Margins. Find her poetry at www.kathleenotoolepoetry.com.
