Falling

Falling

My mother fell two weeks ago.
She sat in a heap by her bed her limbs looking like a
pile of sticks
Wine-thin blood ran from wounds punched through skin
translucent as the aerograms she used to send
Her knee was twisted and swollen, and when she tried
to put weight on it
she went uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
We carried her to the bed fretful that the weight
would snap her birdlike ribs
She never stood on her feet again
and last week she died.

My father fell two months ago.
He was hobbling to the bathroom with his walker
and suddenly he was on the floor, bleeding wine-thin
blood from his head
(I'd seen the same medicated blood a decade earlier,
when he was cutting tomatoes for a salad and nicked
his finger.
The blood spurted onto the tomatoes, adding a second
shade of red. He complained when I threw them out.)
After the fall, his hip hurt. He could barely walk
Two days later the bleeding in his brain led to a
stroke
He fell into a coma and died

A month ago we had a storm in Montclair
We sat on the sheltered porch drinking wine
Watching the wind whipping branches to the roar of
thunder.
The next day we saw hundreds of fallen trees
Alive but helpless, they waited to be cut into pieces
and hauled away
For years, like my parents, the trees had stretched
upwards and stood tall
They defied gravity
That defiance defined their lives
But then they fell.
As they did, the earth extended its reach around them
and reclaimed them