Coping

Now I find what strength is left
long night of long soliloquy in solitary bed
haunted dreams so long ago abandoned
spilling water damp across a tabletop
rude waking to a leg cramp and I jump onto cold floor
grope plaster wall for light switch. Clock check.
Oh joy, hours more to sleep before the morning.
Small comforts come to me as blessings
knowing the task ahead is heavy as Eventual End
that breaks the awful load but not my spirit.

No dimmed capacity to express my love
no loss of desire or the irony of its achievement.
Enjoy learning a new story, sound of a poem,
the wonder of moving through spaces.
I’ve been decades watching this movie and
I kind of want to see how it turns out. Still,
though I’ll cry at the end it will be part of the script,
the script that binds me to this noble role
this role for which I was bred and for which
I am so richly rewarded with this accolade of life.

I suppose you could say I’m coping
the shock of news scraped clean my fear and dread
always worse for vague uncertainty. Crawling
blind man’s bluff through mind corridors knowing
what lurks unknown is about to be revealed .
And if sudden revelation terrifies, if it shouts
where there were whispers, flushes with fury
like game birds from the bush before the shotgun’s blast,
I’ll find myself upon a newer, humble, barren plain.
Strange landscape of the next phase to discover.

The Diagnosis

In his eyes is the mark of time almost infinite

skin and veins and his tired limbs

reflect the struggle of disappointing years

strained heart has long borne the weight

of love and love lost and love remembered.

Sweet rot of breath fogs mirror

staring back this not real reality

a face hardly recognized until

a smile or play grimace reveals

filled teeth or a dried tear beside one eye

inconvenient hair misarranged

too thin on top, too think in funny places.

Humor in the face of the macabre.

It’s something in the blood

old relatives mocked death before their departure,

something in this soupy blood

his body makes from a recipe inherited.

In the movie the dark fog descends from the sky

old testament god’s revenge upon Egyptian innocents,

slowly slithering through narrow adobe warrens

seeping through cracks of doors unadorned with the sacrifice

mercilessly taking the life of the first born.

Is there such an insidious agent that acts

like this genocide on an individual’s body,

fractal-like in its mimicry of social destruction

wreaking havoc and self-immolation on living cells?

A life is this long long collection

of memory and experience

as ancient as childhood, as new as now

the next day begins

desire as yet unrealized

ambition as yet unattained.

What a laugh, to dream of driving fate.

Hubris to order the human trajectory.

Folly to interpret the memoir

while the ticking can be heard

deep below the din of days.

The fuse though unseen

has already received the spark.

The ticking can surely be heard

if he listens carefully and knows what he hears.

Curse or redemption of genetic transference ,

contained in this inherited blood.

Bad news this visit to the doctor.

He now knows how he will die.

Dreading this outcome, feared for years.

He will pass the way of this father’s family.