In Holding

I believe I have felt
no emotion worth remembering
and no satisfaction in forgetting.
For all of my feelings have been
left in holding
replaying the death of a man.

As I have moved within and about
they have laid covered in his bed
waiting for his eyes to open and his lips to speak;
they have refused to believe that his chest,
which moves so slightly in rhythm--as to suggest breathing--,
is hollow.

As I combed the flooded streets
of the eastern banks of San Louis,
they have wondered if he remembers
that he was once a man (elegant, charismatic),
and can hear the doe above cleaning the meadow.


They have wondered if he was gone
before the tube feedings and all night tremors.
Did he see them watching his transition
from life to something else
and watering his growth.
He has never said,
and they have waited.


As they and he lay,
Covered by the seasons
The stripes and the stars
I believe that I shall not feel
And they shall not rest until
He answers, but he cannot
And we wait in holding.