The Orphan Hydrangeas

It is midnight.

With half-dreaming eyes

she is wheezing as loud as

the haunting wind;

blowing the moon away.

A dog, howling, is running

after the fear-stricken moon.

I dial the three sinister numbthe ambulance comes

its lights, turning and twisting,

lighten the Syringa lilac twigs

awakened by her distress.

Sleep is lying inside dark houses

No one opens a window

No one asks.

The ambulance rolls heavily

on the fresh asphalt

as if driving through a desert sand

the fresh tar smells of death.

Her anxious eyes stretch towards me

to keep me at her side.

3: 00 a.m. A doctor’s call

hammers down the word “ Airway intubation”

on my head. “It’s better you came”

Thirty days of struggle! She wins. Death strides away

She goes home. She doesn’t trust death.

With white hair on a white pillow

body covered under a white sheet

my mother’s eyes looked like two fireflies

with no lights.  She lost the second fight

to a humiliated death that returned, cowardly

sneaked upon her, and blindfolded her life. 

I watered her orphan lilacs and the quince tree

that she had planted with her tremulous hands.