It is hard to see him now,
frail body confined to the bed,
a doll drained of stuffing
beneath his blanket,
topped with graying head.

I cast aside the memory of a man
I once knew:
the man who wore his liver
on his sleeve,
the bottle before
any woman, any job, any law;
the man who told his young son
they could drive anywhere
as long as they spent no money;
gas flowed from pumps like water;
the town unfolding as we drive,
an endless archive of stories untold
before wide child eyes.

The man who rose from bartender
to janitor to professional,
back to the bar and then,
in a flash, this hospice bed;
cruel arc of a careless life,
a life unforgiving of mistakes,
disease, and the great, great
imperfections of men.

I am too ingrained for him to forget,
culled from the years erased,
a memory plucked from the sea of fog;
implanted too deep in his heart
to dissolve into dementia’s ether;
but too many memories
have become unmoored,
ropes dangling, anchor lost,
drifting along the tides of time,
listing with the waves
in a silent good-bye.