too old to walk
the aides wheeled him into the sunshine each day, for their peace of mind  
his eyes were clear, one gray but the other as blue as a robin's egg  
he cackled more than talked though everyone understood what he said
which helped get him rolled onto the lonely concrete each morn,
in all weathers

I came Thursdays to see my aunt, on the way to the office
I, her only heir and she still owned the office, the firm yet bearing her husband's name, his first name the only word that came from her mouth the last two years, some strange protein eating her cortex, her body playing a cruel joke on her by keeping her organs pumping away masterfully....she didn't even **** her pants at ninety minus one

when they wheeled her out beside the cackler
he began his sermons, citing chapter and verse
usually from books I had not read--he also said,
for every hour you read, you add 89 minutes to your life
fishing, he said, was for fools who wanted to live forever;
he would settle for purchased words
and the 29 minutes in change

he had stopped reading with both colored eyes he claimed,  
but he calculated he had added seven years, three months, and four days to his life, and he would, unless he took up reading again, leave the earth seven Thursdays from when he told me the tale--then he began quoting Melville I think, if he is the one who hung the poor stuttering Billy Budd

I kept returning Thursdays to ignore my aunt and listen to his words
and when he was yet alive on the seventh one, I asked if this was the day,
"the day for what?" he replied, and he began his cackled verses, from Poe, or Updike or maybe Hemingway when a bull died mid sentence, and  
my aunt SPOKE that day, telling him goodbye

he was not there the next Thursday,
but neither was I