Fresh air.
That’s what it comes down to.

My mother
dwells on the threshold
between life and death.

I enter her room
she lifts her bone-thin arm
and tired finger.
She points to the window,
“Let’s have some fresh air, shall we?”
At another time she’d say,
“Let’s have a cup of tea
go out for ice cream
or go for a swim.”

Now: “Let’s have some fresh air.”

She offers it
as though it is a luxury
as though it is a gift
that we can share together.

She revels in the prairie air
that barrels through the window
billowing the drape.

It is her last experience
of nature.

The prairie air
has traveled
for miles and miles
across the cornfields and soybeans
across Big Stone Lake
the open highways
dirt roads and farmsteads.

Across the grazing cattle
and the wide-eyed kittens
underneath the porch.

That same air
finds its way to my mother
and she breathes it in
all of its energy
all of its life force.

I sit holding her hand
both of us
enveloped in the prairie air.

We reminisce
about the details of life
things accomplished
things left undone
remembered
and forgotten.

Fresh air

in the end

it is what we have.

In the end

it is enough.