Father in dusk, in sheets, in body you
who have shrunk more than possibility

inhabit a mind I can hardly recognize as you
purport not to remember
me, your favorite,

only, daughter.

I exaggerate of course.
You don’t believe me either,

little father.

 

• • •

 

Father, in dusk it is too much.
It is a long story――generations of us
bundle awkwardly in your head. Or there’s your promise of a drive
into the green mountains.

Where’s that?

What are you doing here (he wants to know)

It’s a long story.
Diapered and drawn.    My father. 

• • •

 

one word in the onslaught.
one word in the open field at night, his mind.
he sleeps with his glasses on, familiar, facing the ceiling.
sits with a book open on his chest, every day,
every day to the same place.

 

• • •

 

laid out in a room intended
for dining in a bed that uplifted

the body lying in it

iknowiti knowiiti knowiti

(protests, now that he is
out of his mind,       and furthermore)

But yesterday he asked for cold water, and pronounced it good.
He noted the garden out of the window: a good view, white and yellow roses.

 

• • •

 

father, you are not now
anyone you yourself
would recognize or want to have even
a casual conversation with, and with it
comes a new body, fetal; and thin.

Now they zip you in to a body
bag:         one size fits all.

We place white peonies on your chest.
See what you lost when you lost this world

don’t go

 

• • •

 

— stranger in the hands of strangers,
dearly unfamiliar, my familiar —

in the inelegant brain
wastrel, astral, nonsense’s minstrel

nothing he can do now that he does not mean to.

easy   easy      easy he says meaning

not easy

stop the fucking around you ought to know that by now

 

• • •

 

his belabored breathing:     last day:

the mouth still, and open now.

Stillness, be still

at the end

everyone was a moron.
bad daughter, taking notes.

 

• • •

 

not just any dead,
your father.

tomatoes, the sungolds. how
many are just tipping orange
enough to ripen now       even