This morning, giving my mother
to a hospital, a doctor, a surgeon,
a bed – that is the thing, the bed -

to give my mother to a bed
to heal. It makes me feel old, heavy,
full of the knowledge

that this is the first of many
beds I will take her to
as she gets older, and the fewer

and fewer mornings and the slower
sunrise and the calendar already marked
somewhere with a day before the last.

Jill Williams is a writer and artist whose poetry has most recently appeared in the Little Patuxent Review. She lives in Dundalk, Maryland, with her wife, their daughter, lots of cats and dogs, and an abundance of love and beauty. She is completing her MFA in poetry at the University of Baltimore.