1 Sitting with the Dead

Hartford Hospital

Prologue (First Attempt, 1997)

We practice the first time by leaning,
pull up to stand
and reach out,
reach out
with one hand,
hang on with the other.

My son, my brother,
has reached out to death as to a mother,
but did not let go.
Almost,
almost,
but not quite.

I hold his hand.
Once again, he takes steps.
I am the father.
I will not let go.
Not quite,
not quite,
until he says so.

Emergency

When I got the call,
it was headlights and taillights
eight hours.

Now, I see chest rise,
rise and fall, rise and fall
under sheets,
see the thin knees bend,
lift sheets like a mountain,
raise a tent,
drop and let sheets
fall.

My mind is far off,
touching fields,
not the Jayhawk ranks
that rise by the road eight feet tall,
but the winter stubble,
Indiana cut back to pale rubble,

straw ends that guide
our eyes in a squint to the sun
along lines that run
as if ruled
to that point in the snow
where all lines converge.

Winter

I loved to walk harvested fields,
lands ploughed or fallow,
climb fences, build a fire, warm my hands,
walk my own tracks home
in a jacket with the collar turned up
against wind that followed.

It was usually on Sunday after church
with both parents home
that I sought out the solace of the fields,
leaving talk and meals to walk the blank whiteness alone,

loving winter cold
and the “haves” and “have nots” that go with it,
livestock in barns
and cornstalks stacked up in bare fields
like shocks of arms
you see in old Civil War photos.

What a cornfield brings
is the grace to let winter winds blow,
let the dead crops go to get on with what living is left,
let the drifting snow
cover knowledge and patterns of before,
let the wind and drifts
prepare for the living that will come.

Intermission

And so my son, who reminds me so much of my father,
lies there in bed
and I feel once again need to talk,
to together walk and share things we never have said.

What he says is this: just how easy it is, just a step,
just a simple step,
one step, then a second, then one
and the end has come before you can know
or regret it.

He's not glad he failed.
He knows he was foolish to try.
He accepts the price his body and the doctors demand.
It's a whole new hand,
these cards he has drawn and must play.

He has learned that hell is something no man can avoid,
that the same slack well that refreshes
can suck a man down,
even when he's drowned
can force him to vomit his guts.

Epilogue

So I look with pride
on this son who has failed
and survived,
welcome home the man
that with one act
he has become.
I am not afraid
of either the road
he has walked
or the stakes he's played.

I am rocking myself
as he sleeps.
I make up a song
as I did
when he was a child.
It's a nonsense song
I'll remember
and sing to myself
and will repeat
like a prayer or a mantra
or beads.

It is what I need
since he's now so far beyond caring.
Maybe someone is there
who will hear
and knows how to listen.