THE PODIATRIST WAS PRETENDING NOT TO LOOK
when my father stroked to the ground.
No one knows when he fell,
or where he thought he was.
Maybe he was in the woods,
dew clinging to a leaf,
resting against a fallen tree
rot with rain,
he went swimming
in the theater lights
popping above him like fireworks,
their smokey xeroxes in aerial suspension
drifting like jellyfish toward him,
or he towards the gangled tendrils -
his own appendages failing -
only the mouth gasping for something.
The rest of the theater standing in ovation
but he lay, gasping at the small, flashy pops
of stage lights like a witness to the final stars of an exiting universe.
“Encore! Once more, another round
for everyone, pull me off of these wet leaves, up
out of the mossy sea and into the air above the November stalks.
Let the gassy tentacles of the lights hold me a moment
above death, above the applause.
There are no hands here but my wife’s.”