Vistas & Byways Fall 2015

  • Welcome
  • Focus
  • Table of Contents
    • Fiction >
      • State Birds of the South
      • Two Characters in Search of an Exit
      • Selling Dreams
      • Pacific Standard Time
      • Sorrow’s Memory Is Sorrow Still
    • Nonfiction >
      • I Slept through 9-11
      • Passages
      • Detroit Welcome
      • On the Road
      • It's Been Forty Years
      • El Batey
      • Over the Rainbow
      • Motherhood
      • Not My War
      • Hidden Child
      • Nocturne
    • Poetry >
      • Death Gets a Makeover
      • Arachnophobia
      • Love Letter to a Poetess
      • Marilyn Monroe Syndrome
      • Or Maybe . . .
      • Dust to Dust
      • Morning Meditation
      • Next
      • Someone
      • A Dead Husband
      • Remembrances of the Second War
      • Lula Nunn’s Last Breath
      • White Hand Waving
      • Evening in Paris/Home in LA
    • Bay Area Stew >
      • Behind the Green Door
      • The Real San Francisco
      • Top Dog
      • At Home with the Homeless
      • Seeing Pacifica Beach
    • Inside OLLI >
      • An Interview with Sarah Broderick, Instructor
      • Star
      • Polar Bear Sighted on Golden Gate Bridge
      • Sister Theresa and the Evil Patrol
      • Wolfgang
      • The Making of a Flarf Poem
      • Ruminations on Rutabagas
    • V&B Forum
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Staff and Contacts
  • LATEST V&B ISSUE
  • Welcome
  • Focus
  • Table of Contents
    • Fiction >
      • State Birds of the South
      • Two Characters in Search of an Exit
      • Selling Dreams
      • Pacific Standard Time
      • Sorrow’s Memory Is Sorrow Still
    • Nonfiction >
      • I Slept through 9-11
      • Passages
      • Detroit Welcome
      • On the Road
      • It's Been Forty Years
      • El Batey
      • Over the Rainbow
      • Motherhood
      • Not My War
      • Hidden Child
      • Nocturne
    • Poetry >
      • Death Gets a Makeover
      • Arachnophobia
      • Love Letter to a Poetess
      • Marilyn Monroe Syndrome
      • Or Maybe . . .
      • Dust to Dust
      • Morning Meditation
      • Next
      • Someone
      • A Dead Husband
      • Remembrances of the Second War
      • Lula Nunn’s Last Breath
      • White Hand Waving
      • Evening in Paris/Home in LA
    • Bay Area Stew >
      • Behind the Green Door
      • The Real San Francisco
      • Top Dog
      • At Home with the Homeless
      • Seeing Pacifica Beach
    • Inside OLLI >
      • An Interview with Sarah Broderick, Instructor
      • Star
      • Polar Bear Sighted on Golden Gate Bridge
      • Sister Theresa and the Evil Patrol
      • Wolfgang
      • The Making of a Flarf Poem
      • Ruminations on Rutabagas
    • V&B Forum
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Staff and Contacts
  • LATEST V&B ISSUE

Lula Nunn’s Last Breath
by Richard Simmonds


Picture
At about two-thirty woke into a haze.
Chest pains, not sharp, but persistent,
Usually could sit up and shake them off,
A few deep breaths, some stretches
and could go back to sleep.

This moment was different.
Instead of fighting it off, gave in.
Welcomed it.
Was the inevitable about to click in?
Began to slide. I was slipping
down, sinking into it.

Soft, like kitten fur, or that special
pillow I had as a child. I saw
into my childhood, running down the hill
in front of our house, our house on fire--
two sisters, three brothers died.

Still sliding, slight momentum,
graduating, getting married,
active at church, playing the piano
and singing.
Family coming and going,
babies, folks sick and dying.

Sped up, sliding faster,
life a symphony, full and dramatic,
contracting to a chord, resolving
to a single tone, with a special timbre.
What was I as I sank into it,
the softness, the gentle slide?

Didn’t have to let go,
just accepting it,
Nothing was pried from me,
no tearing, no searing,
no pain at all. Not the way
I expected it.

I was gathered together in a moment.
All my life and the lives I touched
rang with the same tone. All that was.
Then the light came to encapsulate that moment,
to receive it. No one met me.

I expected, when I thought of it before,
to see family, friends, husband welcoming.
I was not alone. Instead what I was
filled all space, the tone tuned all that was.
All that is. It rang and also became the light,
Everything was in the sound and the shine.

Goes on forever, without measure.
A flash of eternity.
What I thought was behind me disappeared.
I have left a dream and now wake
into stillness, Quiet.
Nothing really.

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