Today's poem is by Kelli Russell Agodon

The Hum of the Living
       

Tonight, what haunts me is remembering
the Helpful Instructions for the Dying
pamphlet the hospice worker gave me.

It's subtle but it's not, like finding
a pocketknife in your favorite birch,
like the last bedroom she wandered in,
she wondered in, her last inhale.

When the hospice worker said, Listen
to a song that gives you hope, I said
it's the hum of the living, the sound

of dishes being set in the kitchen sink,
they remind me—life is here.

All those years of wishing
for quiet, for calmness, for less clutter—
protect the chaos with your life.

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Copyright © 2023 Kelli Russell Agodon All rights reserved
from Asheville Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission