THIRD PLACE WINNER
A Kindness Bestowed
by Lynne Burnett
When Camel-heavy lungs finally shrank
my father’s world to a bed by the window,
on sunny winter days his bed
became a beach where he lay,
pajama top unbuttoned, hairless chest
exposed, the whooshing surf
of the oxygen tank now pleasing.
And the sun, unmitigated by a pane of glass
or the pain of a rationed breath,
was kindness itself, bestowing the
warmth of many hands it seemed,
keeping the dying fire inside aglow
long after it reached the end
of his square footage of sky.
*
Lynne Burnett © 2017
Lynne Burnett lives with her husband in West Vancouver, BC, Canada. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, CV2, Geist, Pedestal Magazine, Pandora’s Collective, Malahat Review, Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art, and a Tupelo Press chapbook anthology. She’s 2016 winner of the Lauren K. Alleyne Difficult Fruit Poetry Prize.
*
- Read this and the other 60+ poems in 'The Best of Kindness 2017' available on Amazon or from the CreateSpace e-store: https://www.createspace.com/7018282