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No one had breathed
a word
But, miles away, I sensed my hoary European mentor---
Rest-home resident---
Was no more.
I knew not why or how.
I’d stop to
see him now and then,
Though living far. We melted animatedly in gratifying chats
Recalling Old-World times and exploits
Centuries removed,
As if the long-gone monarchy were
Still in crowning glory,
He in drafty backless hospital attire, and
I in hiking togs.
We could toss around our populistic viewpoints
As once were aired in old cafes
And foreign tongues on tree-lined boulevards
Where progress meant that
Cars outnumbered horse-and-wagon.
This rest-home haven
never changed, except the faces
Who were there to live and die,
Considerately making space for some one else
Awaiting, knocking on the doors.
Almost in the shadow
of casino’s lights and jingle sounds,
This home stayed tranquil, even near-funereal.
Slo-mo was its pace, with elderly who watched TV
Or stared off blankly into space
While seated calcified in wheelchairs in the hall
That went forever, arrow-straight,
Extending to horizons of the past.
This time my friend
was missing.
Apprehensively I sought some nurse to ask.
None could answer till the third---
A foreign woman, like the others,
With lowered voice reluctantly explaining
The inevitable that residents were not to hear:
“I’m sorry. Several months ago, he passed.”
And then I knew this
lee shore
Gathered derelicts that sink eventually,
And most of us would end up here as well,
Adrift in anonymity
As prisoners of white sterility
Where going for a walk alone was not allowed,
And stimuli were just as few and far between
As visits by the friends and kin
Who, mostly, “passed” beforehand,
Or, surviving, coped with busy lives and,
Much too often, would forget
About the European mentor with the vibrant neurons,
Bursting with his multilingual notions, wit and inspiration.
---7/13/03 |
