Six Poems
Elegy for an Amputation
They are disappearing like his toes:
first to leave is an auberge in Brittany,
then fishing the Sea of Cortez goes.
We start each telephone call with a litany
of events: Remember, Dad? Narrative salves
memory. We try to stitch it onto the stump
it fell from. Each visit our history’s halved.
Conversation dwindles to plaints, grumps
and blame—Who put that bottle there? His veins
narrow, synapses thin. Thoughts scatter,
drift, and yet his brushwork remains
till another amputation—do fingers matter?—
when now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t Dad
vanishes, leaving inch by inch and mad.
