Sister-Dove by Leonore Wilson

“The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

And with leather straps they cinched
me to the gurney, hefted me
into the mouth of the ambulance,
and I lay there in my paper gown
watching the slow traffic—
those glinting schools of homebound
fish—while at my side a young paramedic
with a blank face said nothing
nothing for miles upon miles
and I glimpsed the red dragon
of the Golden Gate, a jumper’s Shoal
or Paradise; oh bridal scrim, foghorn,
lute where maiden dusk becomes
a falling star and in the distance
Parnassus heights near Sutro Tower
Is where my young brother
took his life; oh sister-dove,
sister-dove do you hear the cathedral
bells of old St Mary’s, do you hear
their rapacious hunger; sister
dove tell me where is this northern
Bedlam I am heading towards
in this gallows drowning night…

Return to Poetry Collection