Visiting

By on Aug 23, 2015 in Poetry

Boats on Ganges River with spatter effect

I am drifting towards her
like vapor.

Buddha and Social workers teach us
not to assume what goes on
within each other’s worlds.

Regardless, I see me in her mind,
through the haze of disease and
hollowed corridors of her memory.

Is he real? she wonders.
He is my father.
He is my husband?

My name, as I repeat it, comes
to visit, too; the sound
folding into the outline of my body,
bringing me closer to wherever
she might be.

For this purpose, I wear the same
yellow button-down shirt
every time, my hospice badge clipped
to the pocket.

I never know what will find
the switch.

She has remembered my goofy laugh,
straightened up and pointed,
There you are!”

And for those times when I never arrive,
when the visit ends and she is in one place
and I’m in another

like friends who unknowingly traveled
to the same faraway country,
and are one small curved, crumbling
street apart

or maybe she’s in the Ganges,
and I’m on the shore, head bowed,

I see that we come and go
in phases, happy when we find
each other, in our own mists.

About

Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer and long-distance walker. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Angle Journal, Belleville Park Pages, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Empty Mirror, Forge Journal, Gravel Literary Journal, Lost Coast Review, New Verse News, Petrichor Review, RATTLE, Ray’s Road Review, Red Booth Review and other nice places. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. You can follow him on Twitter: @michaelgrow.