The Look in Her Eyes

No, it isn't what you think
when I say I was enraptured
by the look in her eyes --
the eyes were those of a woman
who was dying and knew she
was dying ...

I did not know her well --
she was the wife of someone
my wife worked with in the
prosaic world, the world of time
and schedules and appointments,
the world of taxes and getting
and spending and eating and
sleeping and making love (for
the lucky ones), a world filled
with the nightly news and TV
and a relentless social media,
a world that both commands
and ignores -- but not the world
this woman was soon to leave
for an unique voyage she must
take all alone: somehow she knew
this as she lay small and quiet
in her hospice bed --
past speaking any more,
not even to her old husband.

But though quiet as a mouse
or a saint, yet she smiled, at
all in the room it seemed,
though when I went in turn
to say my good-bye to this
near-stranger, I thought,
'She's smiling at me!' and
then I thought, 'She looks
happy!'-- but how can that be
I wondered -- until her eyes
gleamed with a light I have
never seen before in human
eyes -- it was her soul I knew
that knew, and her soul had
no fear, death being less than
air, less than nothing to it -- --
her soul was ready.