Vox Populi
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Keith Flynn: Granularities
The autumn rain slid in chilly silver streaks
across the window as the heart monitor beeped
benignly, and my father groans in his sleep
as if climbing stairs that are too steep.
Each organ seems like a streetlight in a neighborhood
viewed from the mountaintop at midnight,
going out slowly one by one. “It’s all downhill from
here, Son,” he tells me, “‘til I hit the bottom.”
Incontinent, insolvent, the world is swerving,
incomprehensible, made of ladders and pits, incongruent
gateways and garish lights. His shoes are skates.
“The pain,” he says, “is all that remains, without it
there is nothing left to push against.” The world’s
weight washes around. The faces of his family
are strobes in the storm, leaping out of the sky
like summer lightning between boiling clouds
of drugged humidity. His fingers warp in the downpour
and his skin splits, weeping infection. Nothing tastes
right and his glasses won’t fit, his head feels like taffy
at the carnival, soft and changing shape, bulging
as it is being whipped in the air machine. After driving
in and out of the ditch a dozen times before he made
it home, he hands my mother the keys and stares
at the sleeping beast of his car, another enemy now.
Somehow, he navigates the steps one last time and
takes me on, clawing and heaving our history from
his tattered lungs. Then the hospice nurse floats shining
like a silver balloon into the darkening room.
Copyright 2023 Keith Flynn
Keith Flynn is the author of eight books, most recently The Skin of Meaning (Red Hen Press, 2020), and Prosperity Gospel: Portraits of the Great Recession (RedHawk Publications, 2021). Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, which began publishing in 1994.
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Powerfully beautiful poem, and your Father sees the words you write. Your Empathy and Love. Be Blessed, Keith.
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What a lovely thing to say Katherine!
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Oh, Keith, I’ve been on the same hard journey, and through the sorrowful steps, your bright language and heart uplift me to the light that remains inside and ahead of us all. Thank you.
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Thank you, Linda. I’ve been on this difficult path as well.
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Dad sang me a song the day before he died. My usually sweet mom became mean with Alzheimer’s. I am the matriarch drifting down. I hope I can sing my children a song.
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Lovely poem you’ve shared here, Barbara. Thank you.
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I love how you see how intentional poems in my responses. ( struts around house for five minutes). Thank you
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I love how you see unintentional…blah blah blah
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Such a heartful poem. I know it’s the right order when our parents leave before we do, but still. 💔
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Yes, but still.
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Brilliant in its choice of verbs, images, similes, & tone, brilliant, too, in its restraint yet complete despair — how this poem moves me!
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Me too. Laure-Anne.
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Great poem Keith!
My folks took up the job of disappearing and managed to do it. Several years apart but they’re gone and everything’s changed…
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Thanks, Sean. Yes, when our parents die, everything changes.
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