Notes from My Father’s Bedside

You lie propped in your hospital bed. I read from Roethke’s notebooks. How far’s my father now? Where has he gone, soft ears? I ask you where you’ll go. How I’ll find you once you’re gone. You speak of Lao Tzu’s material cycling. Your hands twirl like pinwheels in the darkness.
*
You hold court from bed like King Henry VIII. Visitors stream past in coats and gloves. They bring with them blasts of cold, of life beyond this cloistered room. You open your eyes, pull yourself back from whatever strange place you’re headed.
*
Leaves pile up on the deck outside the window. Whenever you turn your head you see heaps of maple, flashes of oak. You can’t believe how much you’re enjoying dying. “It’s almost scandalous,” you tell the hospice nurse, eyes brimming with red and gold.
*
Each evening, I give you a sponge bath. You are grateful for this simple ritual. You sit on your commode like a throne. Hot water runs down your back in rivulets. Your white body in moonlight, noble even in decay.
*
We meet in the night. I load my syringe with the electric blue liquid that will take you further away from us until all we can see of you is a bright speck on the horizon.
*
“You were an excellent father,” I say. “Most of the time.” We laugh until you start coughing. I hold a glass of water to your lips. We are past all that now. The countless small violences. The tiny hammer blows and surface wounds.
*
“I’m done with thinking,” you say. And just like that you begin your disappearing act.
*
It’s hard to get the words out. They stick in your throat like burrs. I lean in to hear you. In between this word and the next, this breath and the next, galaxies glide by. “I’m ready,” you say. “I’ve been ready.” We count the planets. We count their rings. You ask me why it goes on so long, death like some endless Russian film.
*
No one is speaking. The only sound the sighing of the oxygen machine.
*
Your granddaughter sits on the edge of your bed, offers you the cigar box full of harmonicas she finds in your drawer. Your lungs are shriveled, yet somehow you find the strength to play. Bent over the calimba, she picks out the melody you are breathing into your Hohner Marine Band, shadows your every note. Oh my darling. Oh my darling. You are lost and gone forever.
*
You complain we are all clothed in black. To please you, I change into a velvet dress that shivers green and silver. Your eyes catch fire as you touch the shimmering stuff. “Who’s the party for?” you ask. “For you, dad,” I say. “The party’s for you.” And I give you more water and a handful of pills.
*
“Bring me a beer!” you whisper-shout. I offer you a thimble-full of IPA. You take one sip, fall back against your pillow.
*
Words wash up on the shore of your brain. Less and less tied to the world where the rest of us live. It is fitting that you – a poet to the last – speak in koans.
*
Today you are sure we are making a movie. You speak of scripts, screens, bloody endings. “What if we end it with putting a knife through my heart?” you ask.
*
I am your angel of death. I fill your mouth with morphine, blue as autumn sky. But I forget. You no longer see color. The green of my velvet dress now lost on you. You shut your eyes and stroke my hair, speak of things the rest of us can’t see. There are ghosts and trains and flashes of white light. You hear the mewing of a dozen cats. You see a pack of small black dogs filling up the room. You ask me how all my other patients are doing, smile wide as the fields when I tell you you’re the only one.
*
Every few hours, the scratch of pen on paper. “Are you writing all this down?” you ask.
*
Your eyes are unfocused. Your brow damp with sweat. I can tell you’re laboring to let go of us. To sever your ties to the clouds, to the hummingbird outside the window, to your daughter who can’t stop pouring out tears. You never liked my tears.
*
You grab me by the wrist. Your milk-eyes lock with mine. “You’re the one directing this film,” you say. “You can make this stop.” But I can’t. You know I can’t. I go into the kitchen so you won’t see me cry.
*
Mom crouches on top of you. She is small as a cat. She whispers into your ear, kisses the lids of your eyes. You speak her name, “Ann,” but your eyes remain closed.
*
I dim the lights, stretch out beside you on the hospital bed. We are both slender as reeds.
*
It is early morning. I wake just in time to hear your last breath. A soft chuffing. A flutter of wings. And then nothing left but open sky and the memory of birds.
*
Your body stiffens quickly. We cut off your clothes with scissors. I remove your watch. The dead have no need for watches.
*
I’m still reading Roethke, but your bed is empty now. The sheets blinding in their whiteness. I remember how you always spoke of Roethke. You gave me books, copied out poems by hand. They are gone now. Tossed aside. Sold at used bookstores to cover rent, buy bottles of gin and milk. Why didn’t I read him? It would have made you happy, but I was young and wanted to have my own poets.