Page 9 - ContrastFall1987-1988

Grandfather

Antiseptic smell
White robots scurry
As I walk down the hall.

He will not marry
Death before I arrive.
How can he lay still
Waiting for the blackness inside
To eat away and kill?
In bed, his body frail, like glass--
Ready to break, to leave us sad.
Lips pressed white, eyes shut fast.
I reach to hold his hand.
His eyes open. Circles of steel
Light up. It nears his time--
His time to leave and feel
Safe from life's cruel game.
So weak, so frail. It shouldn't be.
Yet here rules don't apply.
Please Death, take him carefully.
Out in the hall, I cry.

--Stephen DuBois