Soft-shoe across the dance-floor
at your granddaughter's wedding.
You swallow an anti-inflammatory
with your double whiskey,
and feign living again
until you begin to convince yourself.

You told the college boys not to tell
on you, when they saw you smoking
**** in the old folk's home.
In return you would
throw back their ball
every time it would come past the fence.

“A lifetime is all that you can make it”
was you mantra for living when you died.
From then on I tried to look for
the sunlight in a distant fog of stars.
I looked to capture a moment of permanence,
to remember your name
beyond the need for time at all.