'Dying Light' and 'Rainbow Baby', by Rae McMinn Kaigler
Dying light
Sage and bluegrass, you and me,
pink phlox all washed in long yellow light.
Behind us the line of night comes,
our shadows stretch across the landscape,
preposterous and alive. We wonder
if we will fade at once
or lose our shadow bodies piece by piece.
There is a soft urgency,
we are talking about cancer
even when we are not, we need to know
how it happens.
Squinting, you offer a third possibility
it looks like your shadow is spreading. I say
maybe we’ll elongate until we’re meaningless
I mean it to be funny but it almost makes you cry.
Our edges blur as the line comes for us
we don’t even feel it erase our shadow legs.
Rattled, we raise our arms above our heads,
silhouette hands grasping at the light
as our chests fade, our heads
turn into tufts of bluegrass, our fingers
work fast on this canvas of dying light
carving our initials into the air, insisting
we were here, we were here
before folding
into the blue and green night.
Rainbow baby
My patient is having the baby
she will introduce as her first
because that silly bird was stillborn,
40 weeks with no forewarning.
The room is quiet, an itchy waiting
under the skin, love broken
into its parts: desire, surrender
conviction, sorrow. Grey light
drifts through slats in the blinds,
the sound of the fetal monitor is
a horse galloping faraway,
a tiny beating heart.
I enter the room and close the door softly.
When I sense it open carefully behind me
I turn, thinking someone has slipped in,
it is just an empty doorway.
She tells me the door has been opening
on its own since she walked in.
Rae McMinn Kaigler is a 4th generation Oregonian, labor and delivery nurse, mother and emerging poet living in Portland. If you can find her, you will likely do so wandering the trails, mountains, or rivers of the Pacific Northwest.
Photography by Rae McMinn Kaigler