Tag Archives: nursing homes
End zone
Slumped and somnolent, my father smells of urine and stasis, his eyes half-lidded, his shirt half-buttoned, his catheter — part of him now, no less than the wheelchair– leaking from his belly like a poorly kept secret. I dream his body a piñata at a party no one believes, an imitation life waiting to break […]
In praise of dead fathers,
the clarity of their absence. Does enough of you remain to shoulder the dulled implement, excavate some shard of horror at your disappeared life? No. Your fluid, nimble brain has gone porous and brittle, and what can you see in the attenuating dark? This is you now, slumped in the wheel chair, confused and compliant, a […]
Lifeguard
Your days in the dark mute before the television dozing in your wheelchair in a room that stinks of incontinence I want to swim you back like a lifeguard my arm a bandolier across your frail chest beneath the arm made useless by the worst fall (Why did you, why did we, let them pick […]
The tunnel
For the last few days I have been watching an orb-weaver in my perennial bed. The spider is small for her kind — no more than a half-inch long with legs extended — but her web is typically intricate and beautiful, concentric circles glimmering in the sun. Summer is waning, and her time, too, is running […]
Meditatio Ephemera 