MY FATHER TRANSFORMED BY DYING
I sat with him alone in the hospice room.
The breathing machine noises made a nap-drowse
muddle of me and I nearly lost sight of his star receding
from here to some galaxy far from where he was,
a place utterly unlike the stern man I knew,
who was so cool to the touch. He would often
cite Kant—that it was better to think than feel,
until he suffered a private revival on learning
of his cancer, a death sentence in three quick acts.
He asked me to call him “Pop” rather than “Father,”
his feelings, new, under siege—he, now, less a man
and more a near naked patient with no room to move
but away, as he became less “star” and more a small
part of an unknown galaxy, warm in the night sky.
—from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
__________
Dick Westheimer: “Like most of the poems I write, this one surprised me as it unfolded. I began with three words written at the top of my page: ‘galaxy,’ ‘incongruous,’ and ‘cool.’ What emerged was a reflection about my father, who died almost 25 years ago. A bonus surprise (poetic turn?) came when I shared it with my sisters—neither readers of poetry. Image after image (sometime more from the universe of Truth rather than that of fact) prompted the recounting of long set-aside memories of our father—mostly experiences unique to one or another of us—which we shared for the first time.”
