The sting in a limbering spring day
foreshadows summer. Through her window
roses plait themselves together beside young-
leafed eucalypts as she, too ill to speak,
slowly becomes my eye in the clouds, the gap
I will see through. No one knows me better
than she who circled my first flight. I’ ve tried to prepare myself, remembering
her cyclopaedic mind, her gift for solutions.
My bird-mother. I reach out, hold her hands. She slides down into sleep and wakes again
on this final island, where touch is more important
than words. She grimaces, begs for morphine...
Our world divides. We’ ll fly differently now. Published in The Review, Weekend Australian, 2006