“Have You Ever Written a Poem about Death?” My Mother Asks

We keep saying “it’s ok it’s ok it’s ok”

to the improvisations sweeping through my father’s body

like apnea,

like anaerobic gewgaw plumes radiating from what he is and was and is.

I can’t know what it will be like when he’s gone.

He’s not Williams’s “godforsaken curio” showing up

in the third draft of “Death.”

That man there is my father.

This man here, right here.

Only in these last long years have I been able to comfort him,

I wouldn’t have dared before, he distrusted comfort

and drank his coffee black to avoid the inconvenience of milk.

Now I can put my hand right here on his head.

And all I need to do is keep my face calm, a calm mirror

to his blank and seeking eyes.

That man there is my father.

This man here, right here.

I’ve used the word hospice before, without understanding,

just listening to the ad hoc hiss

and preternatural apneic sprinklers of childhood,

the dark green hose of

death feeding the extraordinary plumes.