My Mother’s Sky

(Eileen (Lee Porter) Grayhurst 1930-2024)

The Death Journey

Space around the memories,

walking the cul-de-sac,

house to house, in a dream

where the small school stood and the field

is just the same where you linked arms

with your teacher and talked,

bright with your awakening into literature.

The trees are stronger, thicker-trunked,

living non-violent as they expand

and take up more ground.

Space from room to room and five hawks

fill the sky, then merge with the sky over the lake

and the vast line of clouds, changing temperature.

She drives her last car drive,

into this emptiness that does not hurt

but offers no comfort.

After the drive

the love in her blazes refreshed

as she sits in her lazy boy chair,

forgetting her sickness and old age,

blazes the whole scope of her magnificence,

strongest in her compassion.

This last journey we will have together.

We will overcome together until the end

and even then

there will be no ending, just a change,

space, I cannot fathom,

space added between us, space experienced

sometimes as a shedding of plumage,

sometimes, as a wasps’ nest touched,

accidental unbearable sting.

Before I remember

blank days, atheist days

that left me sombre-hard,

but these days

are brim with harrowing storms,

prayers and keepsakes infused

with intractable meaning, memories

ripe and revered as a newborn’s flesh.

Before, my soul was below, breaking

through the body regularly, in pieces,

but these days it sits on the surface,

intact, a glass sphere without protection,

thrown and rolling, like

a lightning fuse, cracked.

These days there are no pointed steps,

but each day is like the first sun rays seen,

heightening my energy to be as kind and capable

as possible as the bringing pulse lives in a jar,

is taken out of the jar, and dying takes its fill,

and death runs in circles around the dream

and everything within the dream

that is real and everlasting is quenched

when the days are these days

sober and groaning, rising

break-and-fall, cresting hard

with this shining golden sharp

hurt, breath-taking.

Tricky blood dripping

into upper wall cracks,

through the grout tracks

and into winter’s foreboding

months ahead.

How does it take so little to examine

the underside and know it is rotten,

flesh covered but disintegrating

underneath?

How many hands have to wash

at the same sink until the basin gets cracked

and the taps only release a trickle?

Tomorrow is today is

a slow-moving line bruised

with intensity and trauma,

clothed in brackets that shift then fall

then plateau before they fall again.

What seems unending

will end and when it ends

an ocean of emptiness will

consume. The dragon’s nest

will be disturbed and

heat will flow its lava-reach and hot depth

into the ordinary, the extraordinary

and everything in between.

This star is imploding into a vacuous

vacuum-suck and spiral break, spinal break

that breaks any chance for mobility.

When it ends it will be my end,

orphaned, no hidden curses, icons will be broken,

and saints will be laid bare, naked, exposed before God.

So end, my mother, but do not end,

be like a songbird blasting her song

before the sun even rises, glorifying,

and watch the heavenly bodies

surrounding, lifting your soul gently,

transforming you naturally

to breaststroke through

sun-bearing ridges

rising, dipping

divine dimensions.

The backside of the shadow

is awake, and losing ground again

burning in the sinkhole, into

a conclusion of harsh hard

cause-and effect.

Eyelids lower, sleep is never rest

but a patchwork horror-show

of violence and loss and things

once perfect, stolen

behind locked doors.

Underground, the circus continues

and I will never find my way out

of this mirrored maze.

I know that if I lie flat in the stark silence,

mortal eroding flesh is inevitable.

Extravagant love always has a price.

The price owed has been paid and I must leave

the turning circle, step past the fissure-groove

and sink into a faith abiding.

I will walk with you reckless

over this abandoned lake,

skipping across veiled skin ice,

thinning, seeing through, skipping,

and somehow never a crack will form

and never your toe nor my heel

falling through.

The smell of worms.

A feast that rages inside

the system-nerves, taking

the body to extreme outerspace,

thresholds of reason

and waiting in the death-year

the year of exhaustion – one day brushed

with energizing hope, and the next,

crumbled, withdrawn.

What is deception in this playing field?

What is an honest ascent that will also

echo into the roots and stay there?

The distance to carry this weighted reality

is unknown, the duty within it, and the love,

is immediate and unquestioning.

So I stay, pressed against the mountain,

pressed against this aching uncertainty.

Pressed and moving and mourning

each conversation, trusting

that the sharp pointed misery

will not pitch, that peace will expand

until peace overcomes.

Arrow stream

in between existences

splashing between shores,

forced to confront her ancient

criticism that has wrapped

my mind-frame and grown

a shadow as cumbersome

as a heavy chain.

This land she demands me to walk on

crowns me with gruelling labour,

hijacking my dignity and sense of equality.

It is a constant place of servitude merging

with guilt and a dismissal of my strength

and true worth.

This red line drawn is crossed over,

onto hot sands without sandals.

Mine is to give but not to neuter

my prayers – rage and pity colliding.

I will give but I will not have

my music reined and whipped

and tossed like a dusty bag

with the rest of the clipped toenails.

I will tell her what I cannot tell her,

by not owning her hierarchical demands

as I give, as I am placed within

this imprisoned place

as her sickness and drug-induced mania

takes control –

her petty compulsions incurable,

but my love for her

so much more.

            Kaleidoscope flaming,

her eleven colours remaining

mixed and pure and still swirling,

undimmed

by suffering’s panicked toll

Too much dust and debris

filling the vents, my lungs.

Twisted plots of imagined problems

flung across the river without

factual explanation.

So I endure and I count my numbers

to hold in my anger, hold back my tears

and keep doing the soft servitude and

diligent care I am accustomed to,

instead of doing what I want to do –

withdraw, fold up and out

for at least a good week.

Too much drug-induced insanity whispers,

whispering accusations that hold no water,

but cut and kill just the same

all my good will, my enduring effort

and my exhausted heart that believed at least

it has kept itself true.

The crow almost hits the moving car,

almost goes under the wheel. Instead

it somersaults and avoids being clipped

by inches, flying in front of the car window,

raised away by maneuvering a mounting wind.

Too much blood without redemption.

Too much condemnation for a false claim,

a winter blank and brutal,

not of my own making.

Remember, remember –

the crow caws and reverberates

into the white cells, red cells

or your bloodstream –

Remember

God gives nothing easy,

nothing worthy of keeping

that doesn’t first eviscerate

before reseeding

your radiant core.

How can I rock

between the eaten bread

and the rotten leftovers,

filling plates with putrid smells

and locked-in rage that rages in

an insomniac relentless punch

and tilt – twisting the bowels,

concerned only with petty victories?

How can I keep my self open

while needing full-on protection

from her drug-induced distancing eyes?

How can I live through another day

of exhausting intensity, with unveiled

shameless fears filling space and

the brutal-swerve

of a lingering inevitable?

How can I hold on until the end

hold out until permission is granted

to at last collapse flat out,

unfold, fold?

Last days, these days

roll like a slow-moving stone

across a stony terrain –

many bumps, inclines, declines

and turns.

Last days, restless then at peace

then restless again

as limitations close in so only

the essentials remain.

Last days are these days

soaked with this blazing wound, continuing.

These days there are no more plans

but to live through the days letting in

the undefiled grace that rises like vapour at dusk

through the balcony-door crack,

through her smile which she still manages occasionally,

keeping pace with the clawing hunger for relief

and the undercurrent smells of sickness.

These days are the last days

I can love you,

and how I love you, my mother –

your bright sailboat stalled

in the maw of this menacing wave

surging.

It is clear

that finally we are

adopted into the universe’s time frame,

that time is not counted by cards

or the constellations.

Clear that light is not light-weight

but heavy

when it transforms.

Cracked leather belts tighten like nooses,

dreams crack then shatter and scatter

their fragments down the drain.

God is in the laundry room.

God is in her laboured respiration

and in her smile she now only shows

to strangers.

It is clear dying is not death.

It is its own journey –

a body breaking, a soul struggling

and losing

no matter the effort

to keep itself here, whole.

I wish I was a snail

robbed of its shell, squished

underfoot, drying up in the

sun

so all that was left

of me was a thin crust of skin

that found its way into pavement pores,

and I could be disintegrated, be no more.

I wish I had no responsibilities

but to my solitude, my own thoughts

waking and sleeping.

I wish I never tried to love

because now I know

I have failed at love, to love,

to be strong when open, protecting

not only from the outside but inside too,

taking on others’ spiritual burdens,

not out of kindness

but out of cowardice and the delusion

that the world is anything but

a lulling zone of harsh beggary

and bully imagination.

I am a broken toy kicked to curb.

I am nothing. I have nothing and

I wish I was a snail, dried up,

sensory-dead, flat

and inconsequential.

I don’t know how to sing.

My legs have become old

and there are no more believers

around me.

Clasped in a never-opening lair

with active lava and no windows,

I cannot find the cave through the narrow incline,

trapped, submerged.

I cannot sing or breathe or be here

as I am broken down

bloodied and maimed.

I cannot continue to move,

pretend the feeling light is inside me

when it isn’t, when most days

I wish it was over and the throne of my failure

would burn with myself along with it.

Chaos, eroding sickness,

and the brutal cold reign supreme

Everything I have done

is shattered in a pit

with no way to reassemble or resume.

I don’t want to be here

I don’t want the natural law

but only God’s mercy.

I cannot sing.

My memories are false, used-up

and dissipating.

Exhausted like a willow tree

is exhausted after a storm

but the storm keeps thrashing

and scooping all strong things once rooted

to the ground, releasing them across

the lawn like a brick thrown to the head,

like a dream inhabited in its ghoulish

madness, running but getting nowhere.

The suffering, the need

and the love that keeps

it together but not always.

Nerves dosed in gasoline –

fire just feet away but still at bay.

Breathing for one day, taking no messages, hearing

no extreme complaints. The doors are closed.

The balcony window is open. I step out,

there is a sky and a hawk merging with the clouds.

How much more can I hold?

And then it will be over, and I will hold no more,

not her frail hand, not her scent, not her eyes

with my eyes in deep and struggling prayer,

not her body leaning into my arms,

her full weight surrendered.

A day of reprieve,

wearing a costume and getting

in a car.

A day when the light

is unhooked from its source

and no one will say why

We will just carry on as through

this distress is natural

as though it is a wave to endure

instead of a captive fall.

A day of reverie,

the last time of gathering

and playing the role

The first Christmas at her home

The first time she will sleep through

most of it.

A day that we thought would not come

with her still with us.

So we are grateful

and we take this day

putting our mourning aside

this day – a winter-solstice flower

bearing its last bloom

before the advancing frost.

After the end,

when the end comes

and speaking is useless,

her home will be a torch

blown out – her turquoise eyes,

curtained. Sorrow will open

like a jar of dragonflies, fireflies

released as one.

And even then, when resigned

to the careful truth, the separation

will ache like a phantom limb,

like a stillborn child held, kissed,

never receiving.

As the end approaches,

I will have to force the basics

of breathe, sleep, eat

for her sake and those around me

who love her equally as I do.

I will forget about hope

and then later I will remember

her eyes, alit with playful joy,

her summers spent on proud

adventures and the way she loved me,

never giving up, generous

as an empathetic and beautiful queen,

loving me

without understanding me

but trusting me

all the same.

Repeating, the days

knowing a different day will only be worse,

veiling the eyelids, opening an emptiness

that will never be eased.

Repeating but nor forever, but

longer than anticipated. In spite

of the great love you feel, you feel

used-up, under appreciated.

But this is her now, diseased and drugged,

does not diminish her glowing

life-long compassion, her extravagant tolerance

and kindness, connection to everyone, her softness

that still peels away the crust in an instant

when her heart is touched, when faith

is required.

Duty has made work in the garden

impossible, waking up,

a barren chore.

The mountains have dropped,

flattened out into a steady plane.

Energy I gave up as mine, came back,

surprising me with my own resilience,

stamina to hold the days together one after another

until they became months, a way of life and service.

This gift like a curse like a gift

necessary to pluck

my soul from a rut it had no awareness it was even in

until out, until forced to hold a different tune

and play it until it becomes naturally possible,

a place of unbelievable challenge met,

a place to live without

decisions, conclusions,

live as an open-end-nerve swimming

stroke by stroke upstream –

most times lit on fire,

a few times resting on the bank,

looking around

tamed, soothed.

I cry out throughout the night.

I cry for the thousands due to die

who still remain unclaimed.

A slow step through misery, with moments

intermittent of a pure turquoise glow.

A gradual waking into loss and the definite

abyss of absolute letting-go.

Mid-sleep panic that wakes

me with its red tentacle squeeze

crushing my mind,

and the steady breath I need to endure

another tomorrow.

I cry out but I keep it contained –

my flesh without hope

my spirit committed to this sacred duty

as the rest of me is battered, broken-branched

bearing, feebly carrying

one collapsed body, now another.

A kiss

A curl

a look out

a look beyond

a rosy anticipation.

All things compare to each other

in the dark gloom of dissatisfaction,

meaningless activity

reaching its zenith then back to the nadir and

spinning again.

Painting helps and even singing a familiar song

but these things do not break the loop

or contain more than a flawed and temporary ease.

Hands down, Hands open and the mind saying

now- be brave!

Love is deeper than darkness

more unexpected and varied than the checkpoints

of delusion, chaos and dementia.

Love then, widespread.

Take on that love

and place what weighs you down

into the wet cement blocks

of this unhappy nightmarish decline.

Do this and inherit

the dreamy peace

and its mortal claim.

Do this and be devoted

to good service, knowing

all else is bloodshed,

must be shed to earn your keep

and beeline your way to

a maturing discipline,

an invincible pronouncement –

angelic terror

where only

this slender slice of light exits

to squish through,

beckoning, supreme.

I do not know

the treatment

the reasons

for such a grand tribulation

I have only achieved this interval

of a tiny budding joy,

a respite from the imploding friction.

I do not know if it is more than

a respite, if it is a crossing over,

a victory over infection and chronic chaotic influences

but today she walks a little stronger, limping still

but improving her gait.

Today the Earth is this simple location,

open to the angels and to recovery.

I did not expect this calamity, collapse of

every dream, but my eyes are lifting.

I don’t need a massive harvest, just food

enough to sustain and faith enough

for a mild liberation.

Melody screeched to a halt,

bubble big, too big, extinguished.

I relinquished my faith for answers.

Gruesomely unattractive

in full sight

in sharp black and white

immutable, I wanted

control like some want pleasure,

like one without restrictions

or moral aptitude.

Demons aggressively demanded my trust

underserved, making up stories

to turn failures into victories.

Hell is the steel-illusion-force of truth inverted

where there is no bowing down to the greater

authority, who is God, in charge,

unpredictable, not a pawn to use to

increase power, not a valium pill

to ease my anxiety while

traversing the treacherous unknown.

In that journey there is only one activity,

only faith resuscitating,

the outcome irrelevant –

a blue streak across a grey sky,

feasting on surrender.

Sandbox throughout the vastness

take away the end of time

and I will slide like a globe,

like a planet, bursting stars

as I go, grounding suns and

drowning blackholes in my wake.

I will peel back tomorrow,

compost it into a Sunday secret

gasping for a solitude it will never find

or play-in again.

Take the hunger from Infinity and

I will be open as an abyss, spending money

like everyday is my birthday, my death day.

I will give birth away from

the tempting waters of deception

that conceal choice in hesitation

that drive the mystic to forsaken symbolism,

that pull the spine from its vertebrae, rotating

in one split-second choice,

while looking at it, desiring it, looking like

something worth the price of a soul.

Boredom demands at least a breeze,

at least a far-off flutter to speak the hope

that angels are real.

Take us out of this passageway,

underground mazes, mole homes

that imply safety. The sun is a sea lion.

We will ride beside him and he will coach

us to swerve and flip,

avoid the jellyfish and the stingray.

Meaning will pour like rain on the top

of our surfaced heads –

a storm, this sickness, just another high wave,

just another necessity to dive deeper,

lungs and cells heavy, heavier

to avoid the overhead storm.

Inside, full of hot nerves

sinking without the sight of tentacles

or a slice of coral

to latch onto.

Your faculties, twisted,

breaking logic into shards.

Freedom came like a larger stone to carry,

duty like a sunburn, burning, causing

the first and second layer of skin to blister.

Useless music passes, cannot be kept

or remembered. The space is traveled

knocking against corners, bruising bones

and the remains of visions.

Stings on the pads of your feet

in the white of your eyes.

Inside, we are a tall-tower rubble,

a stack of concrete broken blocks

and bodies

and grief that last generations.

Inside, there is a ship enticing

we cannot board,

a mutual weariness,

a ghostly outage blackout,

blinding us from seeing

sharp corners, soft cushions,

the way to retrieve

a glass

in the kitchen, on the counter

of already poured, useful water.

Blended

into this scenery, this sick bed

and the watered-downed horizon.

It is weak with over-empathizing

tearing crusts off until all protection

is gone from my soft mushy core.

I cannot acclimatize to this grief,

her life-force-fading drawn into my own

bruised blood of doom, dooming my

own cells and strength into this unfair despair,

unsoothable scorch and decay.

A washing down after every visit, care-day

so I do not mimic the symptoms

of death and dying and the aching

anguish of helplessness.

This path will not lead

to a garden but to a cliff,

a farewell without ever coming back.

Each step toward the edge is torture

when taken, is forced not taken because

there is no standing still against it,

no turning around, the inevitable is absolute.

This path is darkness, and this darkness

is complete love – heavy, high above,

a terrifying incarnation.

Turn to me, I turn

skinned,

striking a blow

to the inner circle.

My soul is a peanut,

two parts, shelled, asymmetrical.

Unity is divine, to kill

is never excusable or brave or

or holy.

The bloodwind is the wind

that turns to defeat every journey

in disaster.

Take a mouthful – swirl the grey slime

of decline and the sharp spikes

of uncertainty, to swallow and know this

is what is meant to be

and what you have is this moment

to love and this moment again

to love

and the rest is not worth one thought,

is too much to take in,

so take in and yield to its power.

Chips of clear and broken glass.

Will I make this destiny-duty

intact or burn out on a hospital bed,

drained to the point of no return?

The stones are joy. I keep my smile

pressed on, my impatience under breath

and my dignity on a wire – pulled and tugged

by her unnecessary necessities.

When I am tired

the guilt pores in like

castor oil, down the wrong pipe

into the windpipe as I struggle

to regain our once synchronized flow,

but it will not return or rewind, as her love

only shows in momentary flickers now

before she dives again into these catacombs

collapsing.

She is owned by the morphine

pumping into her bloodstream

at regular intervals, pumping its purpose

to nullify her pain, while twisting mental foreign

tracks through her brain that torture her

with their relentless sticky grid

and serpents’ faces rising, telling her

she is owned, robbed of her

treasured independence, confined to home,

watching her once happy socializing light darken,

and you love her, you know her. You know

for a while

the monster will chomp at the moon,

will take the glow from her view,

soil every brilliant horizon,

will capture her honoured seat,

even conquer her spiritual home,

for a while

death’s rotting belly

will do what it must do,

bloat and swell

foul, naturally cruel.

Dream-self

destiny-self

never align

As soon as the shackles have cracked,

a new cage has formed,

taking away the morning light,

a chance to see the phenomena

of untainted being.

I have fallen into usefulness

like a bottomless sewer pit, falling, nothing

broke, just the drain of gravity in my bones

as I fall, lacking

the gift of appreciation and the possibility

of a safe landing.

Selling parts secretly owned

but never named. Scraping off

the daily dread to find a hope.

Hoping her suffering soul

will be reconciled in a flash,

unscathed when the new one begins,

budding, blooming into the opening,

the center of the ring,

enveloped in tenderness eternal.

Then the peace she gained by her natural

good heart will expand and blot out her

anxieties, her struggles for control.

She will be unharmed, in a state

where joy overwhelms with a constant

ecstasy sustainable and God is beside her

within her and all around her, swirling, caressing,

like God has always been, only now with a certainty

that even the most faithful servants

(inside time

inside gravity)

have never known.

Purely dying

like the universe

bottoming out,

letting it all go into

a sinkhole oblivion.

Purely fear of losing

the definite, the breathing lungs

in the body on the bed

and the heart-seized and blind from

its atomic power.

Purely God

holding the stick and strings,

concealed and blanketing,

preparing her soul for this

divine beginning.

The hall light is dim.

The curtains rustle forward.

Her eyes, once wet with anxiety’s tears,

now see the angels surround, the truth

of boundless love, for her, for all.

Last days

Dark days

dangerous death

at my doorstep,

swinging its hips to-and-fro.

Burning body, cracked, gnawed

away by insect bites, rodent bites

and the big blackhole open-mouth, forsaken.

Take what you must, but take it now,

swiftly, cover the core and the extremities

with your weight and then lift that weight

into the light of the sun, glorious

as a sparkle-water-wave-ripple

and a solitary hawk merging with the horizon.

Let her go like that hawk, pure in spirit

as she is, kind and soft as a child as she is.

Let her go into a dream that turns from

a dream into heaven’s threshold,

where she crosses over filled with your glory,

and my father looking on

with steady, welcoming eyes.

Outer nerves,

the madness of rise and decline,

undulating like an erratic wave,

the body joined to the illusion,

to past conclusions

and repetitive patterns remolded but unchanged.

Anxiety and intuition smudged

into one dim light.

I bow to the blowing wind, to the ignorance of now.

I hold her hand more now than I did as a child.

Tears rest for a while but lack any regulation.

Slow as a sloth but unpredictable as a storm.

Each day expends

what once was a normal week of energy.

Downward is the secret.

Bend in the direction of whatever gives.

The night is full of apocalyptic dreams,

solar flares and precautions, preparations

to minimize the coming death-blast charring burn.

The night season comes

and Earth is mine to hold,

witness its mark

and its gathering decay

while you sleep in an unconscious

darkening – skin around your mouth

turning blue, and inside that open circle,

inner lips peeling rice-paper fine

and your tongue like a dried log, that I keep sponging,

trying to saturate and regain its malleable form.

Your eyebrows twitch in what the nurses

promise me is not pain, promised me

you are comfortable

even though

for three days and three nights you

have lingered in a grizzly dehydrated shadow-stasis.

These days are like years, ripping away my trust,

my faith, my understanding of mercy,

solidifying the power

of bone-chiselling dread.

I love you, more in your helplessness,

in your patience for the final command, lingering,

red sores forming under your eyes,

fingers cold, purple pale and never grasping.

I stay with you in that place, even when

I sleep, I never sleep without you with me.

I love you and I hurt for you

and I want your release from this

brutal collapse of your form.

Why or even how you are lingering so long,

even the doctor can’t say.

I think you are buffering us from the pain of your loss

I think sometimes maybe mercy burns

hotter than punishment.

And these times

life surpasses understanding,

when the bottom current over quicksand thins,

breaking the chrysalis, clearing the way

for an unwanted redemption.

I am lifted

Blood on a field   Blood in a cloud

and then so many

streams flowing, unassuming.

I take your hand, lean

over you and kiss your forehead,

weeping, praying, saying

again and again I love you, thank you.

Your breaths are short, coming from below

not from your chest, but from your deepest gut,

stillness, ease, a letting go.

I drop like a bird on your shoulder.

I know you are leaving. You know

it is a beautiful alchemy, accumulation

of a life so gloriously lived. I tell you

to take Jesus’ hand and he will take you

to the golden tender light of eternal heaven.

You take his hand, and God

has become the atmosphere,

encapsulating, removing time.

Your last breath is more

a soft sigh than a breath,

not a cross-wind of struggle,

not a brush-stroke of “But wait..”

You are gone.

Seagulls fill the view from the window,

circling, joyful in their angelic form.

You are free.

My heart has merged with yours,

forest blue, deep and rich and forever.

My mother, my powerful ally,

friend for all ages – goodbye,

the six-month journey to this point

was treacherous, the last weeks, tortuous,

but these final moments were divine,

was God’s grace in full view, mercy

that healed all pain gone before,

resurrection visible like spread-out water lilies

or Elysian Fields, sublime.

            My mother, the sky is again yours,

embracing the seen and unseen spectrums.

Your sky is prophecy, feeding

the bedrock and the water’s reflection,

all parts proved sacred, identical

to the immutable moving whole.

Allison Grayhurst has been nominated for “Best of the Net” five times. She has over 1,400 poems published in over 530 international journals, including translations of her work. She has 25 published books of poetry and six chapbooks. She is an ethical vegan and lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay.