fell

like a hatchet

on my mother’s soul.

She was afraid

having heard

its hover,

seen the hand

that held the haft

aloof, aloft.

She said wait

to the light

but it could not.

She left

when the dark

would not.

Angela Alaimo O'Donnell teaches English at Fordham University in New York City and is associate director of Fordham's Curran Center for American Catholic Studies.  Her books include two chapbooks, Mine (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and Waiting for Ecstasy  (Franciscan University Press, 2009), and two full-length collections, Moving House (Word Press, 2009) and Saint Sinatra & Other Poems (Word Press, 2011).