prologue with facts                                                

1
tension of haste and regret

                                         the body separates itself from you
                                         who waits far off inside it
                                                                                                       for what signal
                                          reveals the foolishness of breathing
                                          to him who has no use for it
                                                              to all of us poised for a dance
                                                                                   that cannot start
                                          until you stop
                                          waves lifting you
                                          that fanatic the diaphragm
                                          lifting you

2
the body a dry door in a wind
the body a bleary sign in a wind
the body a rag on a wire
the body an abandoned crane
the body a handkerchief waving
                                        and you a slow fish
                     on the long line of your breath
                     your breathing a tide
                     that shifts in the sucking and chimes
                                           of death’s television
that I am guilty watching

                    or the body is a glove
                    your hand is leaving
                    or the body is an egg you arch against
                    rhythmic short wavelength
                    of definitive fuel

3
dragging yourself after enormous delay
after vast consideration towards
what edge
                    an event in the lit hissing ward
                    where we converse
                                         echoes into you and hours
                    after you change
                                         a huge fleet veering after a faint signal
                    how slowly you fly against the wind

4
sailing away
into the softening distance
a thousand orchestras practising
a thousand years could never
follow the rhythm of your breath
                                          each wave higher and softer
                                          each downslide longer and softer
                                          your face each moment
                                                               becoming the sea
                                                               I come back to you
from impatient terror a sail emerges
                    all the numbers in the world collapse

             5
                    exhausted climber
                    summit breather
                    odysseus in the hot blair of sirens
                                        a starling chuckles on the point of your roof

                    infinite soft circuits of the universe pull your body
                                                                through its own falling shape
                                                                a silhouette over starweb
                                         you row slowly out
                                         with smooth long oarstrokes breathing
just enough to blow the silk door open between worlds

my dad died in april 2003. most of this poem was written in the hospital ward beside his bed as he lay dying, in an effort to fix in my memory this sad, strange, frightening, magnificent process.