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