My grandfather came home from state prison
hardly noticed, came home simply to die
in peace, or rather, in whatever semblance of
the memory of past sins having their final say,
while cancer gnawed slowly at his bones.
Though not slowly enough and not
painfully enough, my aunt later quipped.
On that first, and last, hospital visit
he resembled most, to my young eyes,
the Egyptian mummy sleeping under glass
at the science museum -- that bleak
skeletal grimace glowing ghostly through
the centuries, one long, withered finger
pointing toward, or reaching out for,
what we could only imagine, ancient gauze
dangling like flesh in the clinical light,
the merely human drawing gasps of fear
and fascination from all of us gathered there.
I feared this husk of a man, and for him,
feared him instinctively, not quite knowing why.
My mother bent low to whisper to him
the forgiveness which her faith demanded,
as one would comfort a suffering child,
before walking us kids solemnly back
outside, the night suddenly quiet, hesitant,
the winter sky hanging flat and low
against the earth, our small breath visible,
hovering in the air between us.
