Once Upon a Time Poems

Poem's End

In the hospital room of a poet-friend

Before,
he wrote poetry instead of writhing.
Now,
outlook gone dark,
in the torque of fate,
his tangled cords
sing a swan song
to the hoarse tempo of a fever
barnacled to the body.

Around his bed,
no dreaded talk,
no cryptic comments,
no overtones of penance
for having walked all over his verse,
but fresh flowers,
coffee trembling in mugs,
visitors with hair-splitting wishes,
kind words
sieved through cheese-cloth,
against secret thoughts of loss.

Disclosing in silence
his pain,
a beakless bird,
the poet,
inside sterile sheets,
muses:
“Why all this hectic covering-up?
The world’s turning sepia and white,
and a poem
has to end sometime.”