A machine keeps him alive now that his kidneys
will not and he endures it all without a mother (she would have nursed him like no
other) but he has me and he has the machine,
both second best but we keep him going,
all by the force which has a way of pushing
life through the odds, the cracks, just look
at the flowers shooting up from the patio fissures
(I tell him that on his bad days),
just look at those blind bats that catch a meal
in the pitch of night deep in the distance,
how they follow the echo, or the mushroom
that explodes overnight in the junkyard.
How life abides, goes on by the grace of that
generous force, how it stages its comebacks,
how it abandons reason and just drags on
stubbornly, flying in the teeth of it all.
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest,
day and night, shall not cease.
