Death

—after Anne Sexton

I am tired of saying good-by.
I despise limping and tripping
up the stairs. I dread waiting
in hard, plastic chairs for grim
diagnoses, and now I know
how death begins. Like a poem
blurred by my thick
cat-eye glasses. Like a hummingbird
in my throat when I hear
my mother’s laughter
as she plucks a yellow honeysuckle
from the rusty gate in Galena,
pinches off its stem, pulls
the stamen through the bloom.
“Open your mouth,” she says to me.
“Catch the honey with your tongue.”