The Last Day

by George Moore

With a breath like the Lois flower’s
sweet corpse that draws the beetles
to the yellowish grave of its stigma

the flesh and bone canyon
where trees of days show no wind
and nothing worldly moves

the Rattlers and Gilas all invisible
the light a splash of washed out red
in desert’s mouth, galaxy’s center

her earlier life afloat like cirrose pedals
on lake water’s sheen, or
a painting of wine in a glass

my mother sails the final day
as relatives gather, come in
by invitation or sucked in by

the vacuum of regret
to witness what cannot be witnessed
sing the songs they have forgot

drawn like beetles to the speechless
gynoecium, the invisible breath
its poisonous blossom

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George Moore has a new collection, Children’s Drawings of the Universe, coming out with Salmon Poetry (Ireland) in February, and my last is The Hermits of Dingle (FutureCycle Press, 2013). Publications include The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, North American Review, Colorado Review, Antigonish, Blast, and Orion. After teaching literature and writing with the University of Colorado for many years, he is presently living with his wife, a Canadian poet, on the south shore of Nova Scotia.