Stepping out

 The calls from hospice come every 

day now. 

       Another weakening,

              a further descent. 

My brother's eyes hardly open, 

no quiver under lids. 

His life a dreamless sleep, I am told,

       he swims away from his shipwrecked flesh. 

            Nearly gone, stepping out 

of it as he would from a suit, 

        loosening the tie, unbuttoning the shirt, dropping the jacket to the floor, 

              one by one. 

What can death take that this deep

      sleep has not already stolen ?

Today a nurse puts the phone to his ear 

       so I can speak, Frank, I love you. 

 

She's sure he hears me.   

      She says hearing's the last to go. 

No loved one stands beside his bed.  

     No wife.  No child.  No God.  

            Just my voice from another world, 

my words conjuring for his vanishing mind, 

      a compass star 

             on a dusking sky. 

That is my hope.  It is all I can hope. 

       There's nothing left but that. 

If only I could live fearless, fully awake

 .......every moment clear between these

ears and eyes

        So time would quiet down, 

        so it would move 

slowly 

         on hands and knees. 

If tasks, news, silly things

       did not hold 

       me in a drowsy  trance

where time zip-lines away

       so it is always the  past 

      or it is always the future.  

How to keep this mind tuned 

     to the shapes of clouds 

    and phases of the moon, 

to the skunks that nibble from the cat’s bowl, 

       the weeping camilla I planted, 

       chimes I hung above it

and after read a poem out loud 

      about why there’s nothing to be so sad about 

     then write a poem about the worm

glistening on the deck 

      and mention all the things Im grateful for

and so turn time into my loving friend 

      who shares delights rather than 

      my foe 

     who steals everything I love. 

Standstill

There it is, finally, the square black box 

with a faint birr, a voltage, on my front doorstep.  

This is what is left of you, dear brother

your skull, your ribs and femurs, 

your sick liver and blistered lungs, 

your bad teeth, your voice

all drained into this box.

I’m afraid to hold you long so I sit you down 

quickly so not to drop you, trying not to tip you 

so that your fragments do not collide

and so here you sit on the window sill

which your presence makes into an altar 

so I step back with tingling and shudders, 

unable to open the box, to touch it again. 

I can only stand, still as you, stiller even

as if alone and frozen on a glacier, eyeing the

box as if there were still a ticking 

coming from your heart, as if I could smell smoke, as if 

a force pushes me away from you. 

I can’t imagine what you look like in there. 

I have read about cremation

it’s the trend now--the dead choose burning. 

They want their fillings and metal valves, plastic 

replacements melted down, smoked, 

their loose particles coming to a cool standstill, 

living only in mortal minds

that worry how to scatter them. 

On a roll

When he tells me about the tumors, he crie

and hangs up the phone 

and I call back immediately 

and lie in his ear and with encouragement 

he lies in my ear.

We do this every day, a frantic duet 

of lies flying back and forth

like homing pigeons but 

growing bigger and faster.

It does not matter to us 

if they are plausible. 

We are on a roll.
We cannot stop, we welcome 

any lies, especially miracles, 

also lies about volition 

and automatic forces, 

lies that keep us blind 

and the terror down, lies

that take us out of this world,
lies that make us go limp

from head to heart, that

help us bend far away from

what is beaming down. 

Slump

Even in the early pictures, my brother 

sitting in his stroller, you can tell
our father isn't satisfied.

Already there's an inward drooping 

in the baby’s eyes 

that mirrors the slump in our father’s face 

looking past the child toward something 

awful that left its mark on him.  

There's nothing wrong with this boy 

but his father’s snub ages him and

poor health stalks like a lion in the weeds.

And so my brother clings to our mother's love, 

and to mine, sometimes thin 

as a blade of grass, 

but not loving him is too hard 

a pill for us to swallow. 

My brother is cremated

As soon as I wake up, I think 

of his body 

cold and stoney, plastic-wrapped,

naked and raw in a freezer 

until tomorrow 

when they heave him into the kiln

and roast my brother.

They said it will take four hours--after all 

he’s a hulk--until heat will rise from him again, 

and he will glow--and that moment 

when he gives off the light 

of a fourth of July sparkler, 

that moment he spits out his last bursts

before fading dark--that moment 

will be the highlight

of my day.