Five days, counted

Death lingers in the air, ever-present,
But does not land.
Though we would welcome it, beckon to it even,
It eludes our call.
And though there are lucid moments,  
Where hearts dance because death tarries,  
Mainly there are painful ones,
Where death would rescue, yet throws no line.
 
What unfinished work must await her,
We sometimes wonder--
Though impossible to imagine work  
From a vessel so frail.
Her strength must be super-human,
We sometimes speculate--
Though her tentative grasp on life appears in  
Vials of morphine and artificial air.
 
She smiles, a smile that no longer lights up her eyes. Once dancing like jewels, they
Now flicker down, ever softer.
She groans with the slightest of movements--a five-pound dog alighting on her lap.
These moans travel straight to her eyes,
Like her smiles once did--but the light within
Hints at places to which we are not yet privy,
Of things only known when dancing on the edge.
 
R.