When people are about to die, they like to
revisit their surroundings, to make sure,
perhaps, that nothing around them has changed,
neighbors still remember who they are.
 
A few days before Mother died, she asked me
to wheel her through the hall of the apartment building.
She could barely speak but she pointed and I understood.
We even knocked on a few doors and the neighbors
 
invited her in and asked her how she was doing.
She tried to talk about Father as though
he were still alive, that we would go back home
and he would be there, a warm meat loaf on the table.
 
During the pandemic, I often take strolls
through our neighborhood a few times a day.
I’m careful to take a different route each time,
to notice how much the world changes with each walk:
 
There, a blue jay alighting on our Liquid Amber,
a mother pushing her baby in a stroller
early one morning, pointing to the full moon
disappearing in the sky: Look, she says, Look.