Mom's Passing - (June 28th,2005) Poem by Cheryl Lynn Moyer Peele

There's not enough air to breathe.

All my pain real
and imagined, mental
and physical Is rising
up from my DNA rushing
through my cell walls pouring
down from my veins
like a gushing spout
with stripped threads, nothing
can stop this pain coursing,
coursing through generations
of flesh welded to it's kinfolk,
eye to eye, memory to memory
birth to death, we all imagine
ourselves to be seperate
islands onto ourselves until
one of us passes.

Then this vacuum
demands living, breathing,
coursing pain streaming
like a river washing away
the emptiness making
the world safe
to breathe again.



(Written and read 2 hours after my mother's death at the Walt Whitman Center - Camden, NJ - 6/28/2005) - It was those wonderful poets that helped me cope.