got news yesterday that my grandfather is on his final decline from cancer. We knew it was coming- we were in Florida two weeks ago saying our good byes and making sure that Grandpa got to meet his great grandson. (This picture is from June of 2004; I am about six months pregnant here. This is before his cancer got really bad.) I wrote this poem, a pathetic attempt to tie together images and emotions as well as emptiness. . .but I feel better having written something. everything is prose these days.
trickle down brown stones. walking in autumn woods. dogs, a chorus, an answer. inside, talk of winter and ash. quietly but slowly. so much so, I have to turn around. we will carry, they say, until it drops. pockets full of tissues. punctual. lighting the pilot. waiting to ignite or expose. I have kept them all, the cards. the occasions for your words. your handwriting tall and slender like spruce trees, bending in an easterly. winter wind. bending as you recline. moving backwards through the polyps on your spine. we are laughing; we are laughing with you. dog is quiet, curled like a branch. the garrulous wind. speaking sends me back. today I have read three books about reading. mustard flour, not mustard flower. i fear for your sleep, your neverwaking. hoping. impossible to go the wrong way. the precise science of death, hiding in the doghouse, is calculating your worth.
4 comments:
I lost my grandfather last year. It's a strange feeling indeed when you know the end is coming.
thanks, Justin.
Times like this when the night seems to be darker than the night sky, when nothing even stirs at the crickets' deafening whir. And we extrapolate: past is present, present is past, future is present, here nor there, here and there...
I am here via Scott Glassman. I feel saddened with your news..nevertheless I remember that even old photographs fade into beautiful sepia tones.
will be thinking of you....
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