Last night somewhere dark hung with pictures
My grandfather was walking behind me when
He fell
Because he had died some months before; I turned around to see:
Frightful wounds were opening on his body
I reached for his hand to help him up
He extended the good hand
The good hand that had always worked for two
Whose grip, as he got sicker, got stronger
The hand that was always holding on, reassuring me
Trying not to weaken the way the other had long since
The way the mouth, the eyes did in the end
I took that hand to help him up
And felt it detach from his arm,
With a detachment that was easy, obscene, fearsome—
Like pulling a wing from a chicken
Tender from long baking
That same kind of exposed bone and flesh
Of mottled pink with two greyish cores: the radius, the ulna—
Felt it detach from him who mid-wived my first poem—it’s in a volume
Beside works he composed over some fifty years
I was seven
My second was framed on his nightstand.
I remember when I felt him detach.
Near the end he dictated some verses
I took them down as they jumped here and there. Was it a poem
Was it dementia? Could it be both? I was afraid to ask him about it
Afterward. I wanted to believe I had mid-wived his last
Most times I cannot even feel him gone
I reach for him, clasping his hand
That strong right hand that did what his left
Could not, and I pull. He does not
Come back. I have his hand
His hand holds mine steady as I write:
