One last bite

Just before life spirals down 

into the waiting game bag like a bird 

shot in midair--

it is still summer, 

the summer before 

it all begins to end--

he wakes from a nap

and wants a burger; one crooked wing 

reaching up, his hand clawing mine.

Such strength!

Still manhood in it!

(Even the fire fighter who lifts him 

from the floor five times last month thinks so.) 

And he scolds, Come on! Help me up! 

This impatience hurts me, but I say, ok! ok!

I'm doing the best I can! 

Which now I regret; how I regret it,

this, all my corruptions.

And then my arms wrench under his pits 

and lift him as the feral wife and forklift I’ve become. 

I lift, lift, lift my man’s heft, his clots of skin,

his flossy egg white hair leaping from his head,

until he stands, 

wobbles and shuffles, a man on a ship rocked by storm 

and I drop him into the wheel chair and bend down, 

nose to nose to cream the bruises on his cheeks 

as stars and tiny warships dart from his globes.

I don't see my groom in there and this drains 

hope, the blood of life, from my own body 

but his hunger galvanizes us so I pull

his bird feet from the floor onto the footrests.

He repeats, I want a burger with everything on it! 

How shocking. 

He has not eaten in days 

and now when all is lost, 

when his mouth 

and vital organs are going berserk, 

he craves life--one last sweet bite of it--

and so I rush to the door, lay down the ramp, 

push the wheel chair hard and fast 

over that ramp because it is a bridge 

and we are rolling, rolling 

over water that is rising, ever rising

ever.