TELLING HIM JENNY

'Tell me the poem...Sonny! '
(he always called me '...Sonny! '

'Tell me... Jenny! '

I recite
('I love your voice...Sonny! ')

as I bathe him
'JENNY KISSED ME.'

He always asks
again & again

'Who is it by...Sonny? '
And I tell him

again & again.
'It's Leigh Hunt...Johnny! '

( He never remembers. )

He closes his eyes
recites along with me

saying the words
silently

his lips trembling
with their beauty.

He always cries
when I come to the end

& begs again
for me to tell him

'...Jenny.'

I ask him
if there was a Jenny?

And he says: 'No...
her name was Molly.'

'But, it's near
...enough! '

My hands
attend him as he dies

I whisper
in his ear

not the priest's
act of contrition

but the words
he loved to hear

I still hear his voice
speaking in silence

mouthing each
invisible word

'...say I am growing old
but add...Jenny kissed me."