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By the Time I Met Brian’s Father

He was wasted to a terrifying thinness, his hands

weak, his voice silenced by a breathing tube,

so he could only write brief sentences, his eyes

astounded by his helplessness, his brain ringing

with anger, his feet restless and in pain, a TV

blaring nothing and nothing and more nothing.

And we were all around his bedside:  Nan,

and Dan, and Becky, and Brian, her fiancée,

and when my turn came I stood over him,

feeling monstrous with good health, touched him,

and told him I knew how proud he was

of Brian, his son.  He summoned

a pencil, and slowly, like an airplane forming

a letter at a time across the sky,

he wrote that he was hanging in there

to see their happiness.  He was seeing

their wedding every time he looked at them.

He was speaking with the single syllable

of his love for them.  We pass, he said.  

But look how worthy they are, how sane

and loving and worthy, as they stand

with the sun on their faces,

and have our eyes and our hair.

©Alan Feldman 1999-2006