Piper’s Dad


An old man is dying in a dark, fetid room.  
His daughter is with him, in her kindness, praying 
and holding his hand, though he was a harsh 

and bitter man all his life and abused her 
and abused his wife.  He had been in combat 
in a war and maybe that was it, but now 

he is dying in a dark, fetid room and he is rigid 
in his narrow, little bed, shaking, hands clenched, 
and his daughter is with him.  When I come 

to read the Psalms to him he seems to recognize 
the rhythm of the words and how one line 
is parallel to the next and this seems to soothe him 

for a while.  He doesn’t shake as much.  
His eyes stop darting back and forth beneath 
the stony lids.  And later, after I leave, he opens 

his eyes.  He seems to focus for a moment.  
He seems to look through the darkness 
at his daughter, and he says two words to her, 

in a faint, croaking voice:  You bitch.  
Who knows what this man was thinking 
or what he was seeing.   Maybe he wasn’t talking 

to his daughter, maybe he was talking to Death, 
but this is what he says, you bitch, 
and this is what his daughter does.  She rises 

from that chair, and she leans over that bed, 
and she whispers in her father’s ear:  
Daddy, I love you.  And that night, he dies.

Love is a great emptying out and losing.  
Love is a rising from a chair.  It is a leaning 
over a bed.  It is a whisper in a room and a word 

in a room.  The last thing this man 
ever said was vulgar and angry and mean.
But this wasn’t the last thing he ever heard.

-published in my book, The Next Thing Always Belongs