When I walked in the room
you were gone half an hour:
dust-motes hanging in hospital sunshafts,
the words I'd prepared tumbling in air.

IV, EKG, blood pressure cuffs
hung slack on a steel mast in the corner.  
On your white berth, you were a frigate,
unmoored from her pier.

Your hand curled in the sheet. I charted
the scape of your body: gnarled knees, wave
of hammer toes, and the pale scars
of skin grafts, oyster smooth.

The nurse had closed your eyes.
Your chin pulled the word of your mouth
to your clavicle; this was the sound
of a cave,  or your breath on rock.

You lingered in the white and silver
room the way fathers do, hesitating to
leave their children before a long journey:
the warmth of your sternum under my rocky cheek bone.

In the 4 o'clock luster of
Indian River sun
my face is black as  bog-turf,
sloppy with life.