Amanda Smith-Hatch

Last Stand

The night-shift nurses gossip and carp.
My mother’s wiry, thick-knuckled hand
Clasps my fingers. She perches
On the hospital gurney. Her feet dangle.
Out the window, an ash tree leans like a harp
On the shoulder of the wind. It sways a bit. A band
Of starlings dips and flows and searches
For covert in its dead limbs. They spangle
The rising dusk with dark illumination; sharp
And vibrant, their murmuration. As one, they land
Just as my mother rouses herself, lurches
Foreword, tries to stand. All around us, sirens jangle,
Lights flick on and off, reflections bend and warp,
Elevators and sundry machines groan, canned
Music seeps through walls. But she’s done. It’s birches
She wants, her ungroomed field, her native tangle—
Fox-grape, wood-rose, brier—the brushy scarp,
Not this caged existence. Wordless, she screeches her demand:
My swamp and beech groves: my churches
Wherein I and God, recalcitrant, wrangle! 

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Amanda Smith-Hatch (she/her) has been practicing the art of poetry since her mother read and sang “The Fox” by Peter, Paul, and Mary to her in 1969. The experience of reading “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 12th grade cemented her devotion to the art.

photo by Keith Hatch