I helped Dad bathe three days before he died.
“Help clean me up, before I reach my end.”
I scrubbed his back; he could not see me cry.
‘Ere said goodbye to father, counsel, friend.
His naked body; vital, once so strong,
was now stooped: thin, gaunt, waspish, lessened might.
Where once his sinewed forearms did no wrong,
‘twas all to do to hold himself upright.
I can’t recall my father’s naked frame
and not see all my heart within that place.
We share more, gainsay not a simple name;
it is an age, a sagging of the face
I’d love to wash my father one more time,
for once, to cleanse bleak winter’s lonesome sign.
— January 2019
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