My Mother Died in Her Sleep, by Christopher L. Dornin

Mask in Tree, by Margaret Laird Dornin (USA) contemporary

My Mother Died in Her Sleep                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Her body, bed and oxygen
had moved to new rooms 
by nine. We sat on her rug
among the mysteries she fondled 
and the webs she couldn’t sweep.
By afternoon she was dust. 
I watched her paint 
with a knife this gull on the ground
with folded wings. 
It broods beside a fallen 
nest with three eggs. 

I’m one of those eggs.
A living mask watches 
the bird from a winter tree
more motion than wood.
A gold cloud floats
from the mask 
like a second head.
A blue glow from these and these 
rooms beyond the frame 
illuminates the falling snow.
My wife’s long hair 

emerges from this painting 
behind her in my videos 
of her playing piano solos 
for the church website in this Covid 
winter of distance worship. 
She repeats intricate 
phrases until her fingers trill 
like hummingbird wings 
beneath her moving face 
and arms. Parkinson’s 
slows her left hand.

​Christopher L. Dornin

This poem and painting were first published in Choeofpleirn.
​
Christopher Laird Dornin has won a New Hampshire Arts Council fellowship in poetry and placed runner-up in the 2023 Swan Scythe chapbook contest, semi-finalist in the 2024 Finishing Line book contest and semi-finalist in the 2025 Wolfson Press chapbook contest. His verse has appeared in The Lake, Oberon, Mudfish, Blue Unicorn, Nimrod and other journals. He has also earned 22 New England journalism awards. 

His late mother, Margaret Laird Dornin, sold dozens of paintings in the Pittsburgh and eastern Ohio region during the 1950s and 1960s. Her style evolved from an early realism, to wild abstraction, to a mature blend of the two styles in this piece, Mask in Tree." Her work once hung alongside paintings by Picasso and Klee, this at a time when women artists received little recognition.