Evensong
I sit watching
as you sleep,
foetal,
in a white bed.Nurses turn you
onto your back,
take your wrist pulse,
“Won’t be long now”.Outside,
early afternoon January sunshine
pulls cloud off the fields
after rain.I am captured
in the rhythm of your breath.
Then, from behind me,
the voices of my gentle sisters
singing, ‘All in an April evening’.
Sylvia Rowe