Death Watch at the Nursing Home

Two rows of heads puffed white for show 
are turned to watch the gurney go 
parade-like down the hall and through 
the double doors, and out of view. 

They linger, as the swinging doors 
are gazed to stillness, and intercourse 
is but the mingling of silhouettes. 
Beyond the tumults of regret 

and wonder, they are elsewhere, all 
their architecture of recall 
connecting lives to family plots, 
or maybe—further back—in what 

may be a keepsake memory—light 
parade, perhaps—a child's delight 
in clowns and cotton candy, high 
and wispy as puffed hair. Friends die 

often, but not in violence—
not here, where death comes to the sense 
in not-quite-joy, and not-quite-grief, 
but trembling, lightly, like a leaf 

that might be blown, or not, or light 
as dandelion fields puffed white 
and wispy, wavering. In slow surmise 
they glaze on quiet with quiet eyes, 

filling the hall with noiselessness, 
and dreaming but to acquiesce 
to dream, and but to linger some 
in thrall to stillness yet to come.