Listening through the Bone by Willy Conley

Author:Willy Conley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

II. EXISTENTIALS

Verisimilitude versus Vicissitude

When I go out in public,

occasionally I see a man

who I think

used to look like me,

looks like me,

or who I will look like.

I do not like the man who I will look like.

Shocking to see him

not far into the future

bent, fat, and gray.

The water falls.

I sit and watch the waterfall

While far from home in Selden Bay

And wonder what’s going through

My grandfather’s mind today.

Lying beside him,

His loving wife of fifty-five years

Fades before his eyes,

Which well and sting with tears.

Cancer cells multiply and build.

An evil metastasis marches,

Destroys everything under the skin

He so delicately touches.

She will improve, he thinks,

As he force-feeds her applesauce

Tainted with medicine—it may

As well be a spoon of moss.

He’s like a child with an old, broken doll,

Trying to fix the legs and arms,

Pushing the stuffing back in,

Not realizing the material has worn.

There is hope.

It’s in the hereafter

Just as water runs over the fall.

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