For A.P.
50ish, you walk into my office
wearing that well-constructed
daffodil-yellow-with-black-piping
Chanel ensemble. Everything about you
says: I know.
Respectable, what my mother
had in mind for me wearing
my white coat,
but true respectable is the way
your brown eyes widen only a little
when I say Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Now it’s Spring and it is anything but respectable
until you give me a CD of you singing alto
in your Christian Quartet
Jesus is my Home
on your last visit before that archaic
transition-day from home to hospital.
You are short of breath
and cannot swallow.
Respectable is the look on your face, quiet
as a vase emptied of white lilacs,
the invisible May morning in those
minor-key hours before you
choke and die.
Respectable: the prodigal son of Reassuring.
Reassuring: the rock I push up Mt. Doctor.
I remember the bedside chair,
your right hand open,
like the window,
the late-morning air.
Footnotes
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