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My Stepmother Lilly at 101

I woke up this morning my eyes moistened
Without teardrops. No one cries at a life
Of more than a century.
She always saw the world more clearly
More so than anyone else in the family—
After the German war how could she not.
She knew the world was less important
And growing smaller. She liked to listen to poetry
And I liked to hear her read at seder
From the Haggadah in Hebrew.
Her doctor daughter relayed the news.
Her death came after a brief spell of eructation as if
She could spit it out like a bad meal or evil memory.
She didn’t like to look back and knew no fear.

—
Michael Salcman is the former chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Harvard Review, Hudson Review, and numerous other journals. His books include Poetry in Medicine, an anthology of medical poems; A Prague Spring (winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize); Shades & Graces (Danial Hoffman Book Prize winner); Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems; and, most recently, Crossing the Tape.

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