surrender

Surrender

Surrender is
the colour of bleached rib bones
in the dun grass of a small meadow,
commas holding space,
words flown like the prairie wind,

like the flock of songbirds in the distance
against the cool clouds
silent with sky space,
wings like little quotation marks
questioning rapidly.

Surrender is what I can bring now.
It is the space between my breaths
where my heart just beats the blood
and oxygen is given single file
to little cells,
a mercy mission, lest they starve.

I breathe again, extend it long and
slow;
try to control
but deep inside I
know -
I know this is my war -

to not keep fighting, not
keep holding on with all my little strength,
to not expect that I can be the one -
the hero of the hour,
the nurse with just the cure,
the words that hold the lungs and ribs
and breath
and song.

I surrender.
I am done.
The oxygen moves on,
breathed or un-breathed,
flown or blown along,
it still accepts invisibility and
all that lives and dies and flies and
shuddering, gasps or cries
or simply lies
on prairie grasses shushing in the meadow’s
spacious song.

This is a larger universe than I
could hold or understand.
I let go my hands.
I let the blood beat on -

and am a comma,
holding space,
perhaps a question?
Perhaps a simple statement, or a clause...
What is, or was
or
could be if the world
was large and open and
I didn’t try to end the sentence -
didn’t try to hold the breath -
just
surrendered
to inevitable death.

And let the little blood cells cup each molecule
of life in single file
as mercy,
as a gift for just this while -
steadily supplied
by words in fluttering
sky shaped
hands.