Grand, Are You There?

A poem for my grandfather. Dec. 12th, 2013.

Dec. 12th, 2013

I wonder if you are there --

not in spirit, not in prayer,

but in the eyes, a voice in the air.

Are you there?

This isn’t Thanksgiving;

this isn’t Christmas.

It will never be if there’s not that one gift.

The tree lights are off.

They tell me i should smile, be merry.

“Why are you so grumpy during the holidays?”

And I hate them,

agitation consuming like ticks.

I need to hurt them, to rip the smirks off their faces.

I held your hand and felt your swollen skin,

and the bruises that your poodle formed.

(She’s safe now.)

They think they know when they never stood in that room.

The sports channel on for you as your daughters wept,

as your grandchildren guarded you, as I stretched across the bed.

We talk to you.

I just wish that you could answer.

The doctors don’t know;

others have hope;

others say that you’re already dead.

I want to go back to the loafering and the pretty church --

to the cemetery that you liked --

With us above the ground, observers,

just as outsiders peruse this situation,

cold or condescending --

belittling, throwing boots at the carnival lions.

And to them, we’re the circus --

a sad, amusing sight

with the beeping and the tubes.

Yes, I held your hand.

Pretty hands, brown eyes.

You clutched back, but

are you there?

Author's Note

All of my current projects are on hiatus.

Reviews

[Sue Hart]

This one got to me. I was at the hospital for a month while my mother lay unconscious and dying from a heart attach. "Yes, I held your hand. Pretty hands, brown eyes. You clutched back, but are you there?"

She had a tube in her throat and couldn't talk right before... her eyes closed for the last time.

This poem is amazingly strong. The words took me back to that place again.