Hughlings Himwich

Linda Duncan: Sarah

Sarah said she came back to life
Though her battered lungs gave up the fight.
Her body, thrown into spasms of terrors
as her soul slid out of the doctor's hands.
It was as through an oven she fell
Crying for breath
Into the eye of the silent sun.

Sarah
With awe I heard you speak about it.
In the cool autumn morning I walked from my car
Into your room that smelled of sweat.
I could not ease your fear.
I could not speak.
But you cried and begged me not to leave.

There are many halls that a nurse must walk
And many hands to hold and soothe.. . .

But you were all alone
When the last hiss of air escaped your lips
As your lungs filled with red

Red as the eye of the silent sun.

(This is the third poem of Linda's I have posted.

Grandpa: another poem by Linda Duncan

I sang as you lay dying,
softly did I sing
washing you with warm water,
my eyes held not a tear.

I could feel your spirit leaving
so I dressed you in your best,
all alone in the summer heat
Singing as you slept.

I remembered you in a thousand forms --
in still life paintings -- still
not a tear fell on my cheek
as I felt your fever chill.

As a mother sitting rocking
I hummed a haunting tune
and held you in my aching arms
until your spirit loomed.

Linda Duncan: Midwife

Linda was a hospice nurse and poet and back in '83, when I lived in Oklahoma, she entrusted me with a sheaf of her poems. I have lost track of her. Perhaps if she is still of this world, she will find her way to this page. Or perhaps a friend who remembers her as I do: alive like spring, empathic, fiercely independent. I know that her last name changed both before and after '83. I heard one rumor of her violent death. May that not be true! Whatever the circumstances are she should be remembered for her special gift of midwifery as described here in one of her poems. The last face that many dying souls saw, the last caring touch they felt, the last radiance, was hers. I will post other poems of hers from time to time.

In the winter hours
I paced the lonely hall
Waiting for a birth (of sorts)
Within a dying fall.

Much of birthing's easy,
But some births,
they are hard,
Hard as the hickory nut
Whose sprout waits for the sun,
Hard as the knife within my breast
When grieving's on.

But midwives must keep birthing
new or dying souls,
A kind of birth it was that night,
And, Lord, the wind was cold.