The Sound of Sought Release by Joan Leotta

The Sound of Sought Release

My friend writes of
sitting at her mother’s side
listening to the persistent
rattle in her mom’s breath.
I learned that sound,
when I kept watch
over my grandmother’s
final earthly days.

Rasping like wind
caught in a jar
pushing on the
loose top that
blocks its exit
from life on this earth,
the soul knocks, rattles
at body’s barriers,
yearning for release
in the last of its
appointed days.

Louder, then softer,
those last breaths,
resound until at last,
reflecting reluctant to leave
body’s fragile jar,
for the sake of
those remaining
until at last, a rasping gasp—
soul’s struggle is resolved
and we who remain
fill the aural void with
the sound of falling tears.

*

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales of food, family, strong women. Internationally published as an essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist, she’s a 2021 and 2022 Pushcart nominee, Best of the Net 2022 nominee, and 2022 runner-up in Robert Frost Competition. Her essays, poems, and fiction appear in Ekphrastic Review, Verse Visual, Verse Virtual, anti-heroin chic, Gargoyle, Active Muse, Silver Birch, Yellow Mama, Mystery Tribune, Ovunquesiamo, MacQueen’s Quinterly and others. Her poetry chapbooks are Languid Lusciousness with Lemon and Feathers on Stone.