Each day, Father,
I am coming to You.
Though fear and doubt
fill far too much of me,
I have faith in You.
Seasons change.
Temperatures altered.
Day after day, Jesus,
I seek Your presence.
My heart does not
comprehend this
lingering illness
I've been presented.
I sit in silent surrender
to this raging inside hell.
Seeing people I love,
and wondering,
how much longer
shall I be amongst them?
I feel again
my daughters
when they were born.
Holding them in my arms.
Watching them grow
into young women.
Hugging my Grandsons
and wondering
if they will remember me?
Still, there is God.
He promises relief.
Not just from my sickness,
but also
to comfort those
who might grieve.
I do not know the
day or the time
of my demise.
I only know that
it is rushing upon me.
God, make me strong
when that is needed.
Stay nearby.
I know I will need You.
Blessed Mary,
guide me to your Son.
Fill me with resolve
to do what I must do.
Faces shift and shine
all around my vision.
I reach out,
letting my love
go out to them.
It is not goodbye.
Rather, it is
see you later.
Father, Your will
be done to me.
I am coming home soon.
Sacred Jesus,
walk with me.

A year or so from now,
when you hear thunder in the sky,
pretend it is me talking to you.

Think of me, from time to time.
Remember me, remember me.
When a song plays that was
one of my favourites, sing along
with it for me. Sing loud and clear.
I'll be with you. I'll be with you.

Do not grieve for long. Instead,
play again those funny moments
when life was long and years
of sharing stretched ahead.
Hear the humour we shared,
and smile again at old jokes.

A year or so from now,
when you are looking at pictures,
see again how happy we were.

These are what matter, I think.
The joyful seconds that make
the mundane easy to bear.
Those scattered, silly
laughing things that stay
eternally present in the mind.

We are only hands that clap
in harmony for a limited time.
Touches of spaces that are
full of vigour, than are empty.
Hesitant to leave what we
know, knowing it must be so.

A year or so from now,
remember me. Remember me.

His brown eyes open,
absorbing every experience
that has been his to know.
A looking back, sorting
mangled bolts of history.

His story. His remembering.

With dying hands he strokes
the threads that have
unraveled around him.

He blinks, and he lets
a single teardrop glisten
on his lived in face.

There are miracles and
there are no miracles.

Either way, the prognosis
is what it is. He knows
everything he knows
and yet he
knows almost nothing.

Tall buildings and concrete streets.
City traffic on major roads.
People. So many people
occupying the urban sprawl.
In the midst of all this he
speculates on any number
of significant resolutions.

How cold his heart feels!
How resigned and dark
are his thought patterns!

With gratitude, perhaps,
he reminds himself that
one thing often leads
to another. There is
neither rhyme nor reason
to what is to come.

And when the droning
that inhabits his thinking
becomes too loud to hear,
he can shut his eyes.
Close them tight.
Let his eyelids be
his entire world
and
sit
like
a
rubber
hammer
banging
nails
into
his
heart.

Toys are scattered about the floor.
Robots and Dinosaurs attack plastic soldiers.
The Grandsons are enacting a ****** battle.
No one is safe! Not even Grandpa!
     I've been killed, apparently,
     by a flying super-robot that
          knows no mercy!

I worry I won't be
playing with them next year.

Darkness all around the world.
Darkness all inside of me.
Whispers behind my back,
murmurs of pity, I think.

I still have much I can offer
        to these boys.
        Or so I'd like to believe.

I'm not ready to stop hugging them.
Telling them, again and again,
how important they are to me.

Little boys live in a special world.
A place of mud and sticks,
        bugs and stones.
        Imagination the
        only rule they follow.

***** hands and faces,
       bodies screaming
          for a bath.

I understand this world.
It used to be the same one
         I lived in before.

Ah dear Grandsons.
        Will you miss me?
Will you think of me
      in the middle of your
            playing?

Will you feel me?

Grandfather lips
        mouthing
           "I love you."

Your hearts so innocent.
Lives so uncomplicated.

Neither of you understands
          the concept of dying.

As it should be.

Stay this way as
long as you are able to.

The real world is a cold place.
A mixture of grieving and denial.
A faithless emptiness that
        consumes the desire
            to achieve.

Toys are scattered about the floor.
Robots and Dinosaurs attack plastic soldiers.

Dear God, how I wish this was
        the only battle I was fighting.

The silence of this place, this spot where I
find myself hiding, is all around me. Denial

of the sky becomes my position as I trap
the bubbles of rare soil in my heart. I stop

the doubt by creating a new dwelling where
I shall hide away in my dreams. The silence

keeps me company in the every growing
growl of early surrender. The winds of change

flip around me, for they cannot reach me in
my sorrowful abode. I am counting the minutes

until I can safely reach distance with my
wavering breast of trust. I cry out but the silence

is too fulfilling, nothing shall be heard ever more
from my lips by any other living organism. Trusting

only myself I force my mind to concentrate on what
needs to be growing and the flowing of the wind

does not tamper with my view. I am immersed in
this place. I am trapped by my own decision, which

creates a bond with bared heart. I am drifting through
frosted lawns where the grass has been sown but

as yet is not growing. My flavoured tongue whispers
in the pulsating glare of brightly burring wood which

I had collected to start a fire. The flames entertain
and I wonder how much longer I shall have to stay

here in this hiding place where silence is the master
of all that I am. Gazing past myself I can only imagine

the cloak of fog that will surround me as I barricade
the doors of my vision. I am what I am; I am what

I was. My question is "will I truly ever be what
I must be?" Silence. Hope. Words of revival. These

sounds must be firm. These pockets of helpless clouds
must be lifted. I sigh. The sunlight is blinding me.

Detached from ripples swaying
in the harmonious space of self.

Tasting the quiet, with only
an inaudible sense of deferential
nothing. I tiptoe fondly
into the gardens where
grows the leaves
of other times.

Like a lullaby without words,
I'm taken here and there,
in many and all kinds of
situations. Teasing
sighs from benign
retrospective
endearments
insist on
understanding.

"Wrap me in your arms,
oh delicious memories",
This I proclaim in
honest wonder.

Every second lived
is one more step
in strong direction.
Familiar guises
prodding and guiding
the footsteps
of release.

I am concerned
only with empty
pockets and lint
left like
photographs
of times both
then and now.

So to new days
and impressive
meanderings
do I linger,
ever glad.

I find my emptiness at the beginning
of panic. The time changes, and as I pause,
between the magic and the real, a sudden
nothingness descends, and somebody
goes away, plans forgotten and mislaid.

It does not matter that the dark falls
too early, skies damp with the the
hopefulness of being confused again.
Even dancing holds no appeal, as
the music is plastic pop with a beat
but without heart. I sense the pouring
little I've become, escaping only when
hour clicks to another number.

Darkened rooms lend whispers.
Can you hear them? Let the sentences drop
and fall into a descending tone, for the
collection of platitudes are heavily
pregnant with hints of beeping bells.

They've gathered here, manifest
with their antiseptic concerns
Mumbling to one another even though
the sentences are necessarily vacant.
What small measure of happiness I
am able to endure is saturated with
routines that are tiresome, heavily laden
with standing still in rolling cyclones.

I kick at the plastic straws that litter
the drinking cups of plans come undone.