By Mark O’Flynn.
‘This will make him sleep more easily,’
said the doctor, gazing into the snoring
storm of my father’s open mouth.
My mother hated him – the doctor –
his stethoscope a thin snake about his neck.
Her head and his – my father – together
as in some teenage pow-wow, behind
the fence of their mutual breathing.
He used to say, lying still as a plank,
his pain was nine-out-of-ten, but how
would you know to look at him?
I promised I’d come back tomorrow,
with all those questions, meaning
say your last, only they don’t tell you that.
The last answers rattling in his throat.
You think having had all the time in the world
there is still all the time in the world.
It did make him sleep more easily, relief
to all, whatever it was in the bag going
drip drip, only they don’t explain
that he wouldn’t wake up.
Conversation unfinished.
And that was the point, I failed to guess,
to speak in euphemisms.
To let the blood settle in the harbour,
the questions
sink to the bottom