nebulous beast

When we speak
of you on rounds:
a nebulous beast
awakens
without warning
without cause
and we recoil in fear.

Many try to alleviate
this master of symptoms,
fumbling with the tools
handed down in biologic alchemy
of the poppy.

Yet, so few of us
know its power,
respect its toxicity
and can wield
the axe of analgesia
towards this
emperor of all maladies.

Though as we palliate,
and lay the beast
to a somber rest
we walk that morbid line
between control
and death.

awakening in darkness

We hear your cries,
the wailing
of dependence and hunger
pulling us from the lightest
forms of slumber.

My bride
called for sustenance;
the maternal keeper
of life and thirst.

I hear her footsteps fall
quietly slipping
out in the dark hall,
hushing your breaths
while trying to not awaken
my thoughts.

I slip into the night
to catch a glimpse
through a cracked door,
of you looking down
holding her close
rocking, nursing and loving her
with all your tired might.

I lay knowing,
of your strength
love and devotion,
allowing me to slip
back into the solace
of darkness.

on learning of your death

For Galway Kinnell

Sitting at a red light
in the darkness
of the early morning;
the slow lifting
of daybreak
as the awkward light
tries to awaken 
my senses.

My brain still throbbing
from the migraine
which rudely greeted me
upon my cessation of slumber,
a harbinger of the turmoil
my soul had been wrestling
the day before with a patients
premature demise. 

Preparing for another day
on the oncology wards:
healing few
and attempting
to return a few more
to health.

I hear your name
spoken on NPR
and my breath catches,
as I learn
that you have taken your final breath;
thankfully, at home,
nestled in that place
of wholeness
and family.

Your voice streams
in tribute
as you read
your enigmatic
words
with a syntax
and cadence
that takes me back
to Portland, Oregon
where we met just once
over blackberries and Nightmares.

Your death
though not unexpected
yea' as an octogenarian,
still comes
as a gut-blow -
to a young poet,
who found your work
to be at the heart
of life, love, and growth.

Your words
are eternal,
a legacy
for those of us
who lived them
and breathed them
in youth,
and return to them
to comfort
our hearts
and push us
to put pen to paper
and fingers to keyboards.

nothing

The mechanical hum
and the cacophony of chaos
surrounds you,
in this place;
a supposed cocoon
of healing.

Yet for me,
on this eve
baring the burden
of the night's watch,
I find no solice
in this space.

For a father,
cannot rest
cannot think
cannot move
knowing that his baby
girl
lies ill.

Nothing,
no one,
no tincture
no potion
no words
can ease the terror
lying in the depths
of a father's mind.

You lie still
swaddled in cotton
the infusion
of health
coursing through you
synchronous with the beat.

A father can try
to be objective
to be protective
to be anything
for her;
because until the bitter
end
you
must always be
nothing more,
and
nothing less,
than perfect.

agony

A father,
standing in darkness,
can hear his child,
produce
a cry of cold
a wail of hunger
or a bronchitic wheeze,
from miles away.

Biologic sounds
which are etched
in permanence,
deep within the cortex
and tattooed upon
the reptilian stem
for eternity.

So now
halfway across the world
standing in the medical wards
speaking broken Kiswahili
I hear her --
a cry,
a scream,
a gutteral cacophony
of pain.

My blood recoils
as a previously senescent
reflex arc
now activated -
springs
into action.

My feet
must find this child
must understand
who
what
can cause
such a sound.

Yet, as I am compelled
to seek and find,
I am horrified -
at the sight
the shear agony
tearing a place,
a new home
in my memory.

Action
becomes reaction
with feet again
racing
towards an elixir
an antidote
to this agony
to my anger and horror.

the countdown

I am here again,
at the bedside
holding vigil
with wives, sons, and daughters,
as time drifts
with each breath.

We spoke for
days,
hoping and praying,
swearing and screaming,
raging
at this passage
beyond;
life.

The question:
at each stage,
in every encounter
asked-
in a myriad
of permutations;
remains
eternally
the same.

You knew
the countdown
had begun -
the moment
you oozed and slipped
your way
into that first
sucking-screaming inhalation
of life.

Yet
we all yearn
grasp-claw-scratch-fight
to know,
to have an iota
of an incling
of when
of where
of how.

I have the sad
wisdom
of knowing
when the final
countdown
has begun;
and yet,
am powerless
to know
anything more
to soothe
the wounds
of that vacuous
space
between-here-now
and expiration.

knowing you

We sit again,
the way two married people sit,
the comfortable, knowing closeness,
the sort of sitting,
that is pure and familiar.

The sitting now,
is changed,
as now I can feel,
something next to me;
what,
I am not sure.

An arm, a leg,
a foot, a hand,
gliding, pushing, reaching,
forth
from the fantastical
roundness of your womb,
gracing me,
in this sitting.

We look at each other,
the knowing look,
of the long married
that requires no words;
a knowing that we have created,
you.

We do not know
you,
we do not even know,
if you are a he or a she,
but we know,
that in this sitting,
that you know,
we are
a family.

the calling of listening

The feeling today,
a dreary summer shower,
tickling my window
with drops from Jupiter.

I ponder in the morning haze,
how things can go awry
become broken
beyond repair,
a permanent schizm.

So in hearing your words
of heart break - sorrow,
and now shear sickness
in the loss
of sense and purpose.

Knowing that I sit,
in this seat
to listen once again,
to sit with the pain
and empathize with agony,
brings a pure solace;
of knowing my place
in this hierarchy
and of the calling
of listening and healing.