Gaudy as the Welsh, old as a lady, too-firmly
attached to a creature, the things I have to say
for myself are changing, dodging mirrors let’s
recall the small victories, all the times I
stopped smoking, the painstaking knitting
of fractures, the dead put out to sea on longer
& longer lines, each day retrieved, yes,
but less frequently perhaps once in the morning
twice as afternoon stalls, I remember him
remembering Korea in the snow, the blood
as told to him by soldiers, his friends who
stayed gone. Remember him crawling with
the trashcan over his head down a clean
white hall, his mind driving him away & us
standing ignorant of how or if we’d know
him again, that self of him we ever loved.