(watch how fast the secondhand moves, once you know it’s counting down)

everyone is small in a hospital bed
tucked beneath coarse bleached blankets
cotton
used and used and used beyond all softness

her cheek is the pale of poplar ash
or clouded sky, hands limp 
marionettes
with IV pump strings

a woman who raised a strong son,
who is now a fine man, who was herself 
Flint
She made fire, She made hearth, She was Home

the one who Towered, and Sheltered, and Thundered
lost now to the aching stillness of a forest broken after a storm
sleeping
in anesthetized haze; old blade broken beyond reshaping

tomorrow will come, and she will be in it 
evaporating slow as a salt pool
stranded
by a reckless tide

tomorrow will come, and she will be fading,
Lioness spent, life still hot in her teeth, until the very last
ember
exhales