Hospice

When I’m not in her room 
in assisted living listening
to her fading heart fail
to pump the fluid from her lungs
as she drowses in her reclining chair,

the oxygen machine pumping air
through the nasal cannula looped
over her ears, I come to rest 
here on the third story 
of the Courtyard by Marriott,

adjacent to a business park,
wedged between two freeways
and the American River.
In my room, a bouquet 
of plastic pussy willows,

the HDTV with its fuzzy picture
and limited channel selection,
the line on the wall where the wallpaper
is starting to peel. Outside, 
parking lot lights glisten

in puddles left by cold 
early morning rain.
The magnolia tree presses against 
the window like an unbalanced
person trying not to fall.

DAVID STARKEY

David Starkey is publisher and co-editor of Gunpowder Press. He served as Santa Barbara, California’s 2009–2011 Poet Laureate and is Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program and Emeritus Professor at Santa Barbara City College. His most recent books of poetry are You, Caravaggio and The Moon Shall Not Give Her Light. (davidstarkey.net)