One song of many to be sung.

When I was young I watched a large old man – strong –
waste away in a hospital bed on IVs – weekly.
One complication after another and I
knew nothing except that there was ill health afoot.
He spoke quietly, loved that I was there, loved to see his family
from a city or two over, and I could tell
this was not the normal routine – interrupted by ladder falls and gallbladder fails.
Work did not need to wake him at 5am – footprints sound off along the hallway
and cigarette smoke an hour later, after departure, fills the corridor.
In a hospital, his footprints are muted in the air – suspended –
and the cigarettes that he didn’t smoke are unlit.
I asked sometimes if he would return home.
It seemed that the hospital room he was in was a play room, mostly – mostly
for my brother and I, carefree, unable to process or understand health and illness.
And we seemed not to care that Atlas was a paper plate.
But it was all temporary like a bad hangover gone at 6pm
and he rose from a white grave, shovelling potatoes. Creamed corn. Well-cooked still-moist ham with his fork and free-hand – Monday hand.
Still pale he laboured to lift a sledge hammer – “ham or…?” –
holding the handle at the very end, slowly – too quickly in my memory –
bringing the metal to his nose, then back again.
He smiled, said I couldn’t do it.
I’m telling him now, “No, I could not.”