Poetry: “Room 707”

Amid nurses in purple scrubs

His lilting Irish song snippets

Greeted passersby. His blanket

—NY Giant fleece in Florida heat—

Was curled on legs now thin as arms

Which once stood strong at six-foot–two

But not since March. And it was May.

He thought the spoonfuls of turkey

I fed him in baby pieces

Were hilarious, but then he

Was full after three. Halting words,

Heaved in shrapnel shards, detritus

From shattered memory mosaics,

Their only sense grammatical,

Replied that he was doing fine.

He craned his neck to call Aunt Peg,

—Long dead—there on the small sofa.

And as always, more than ever,

My welled up eager beggar’s eyes