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Last Words

Selected Poems

Ten Things

He had a special way of doing everything. He developed a method of eating watermelon with a knife, cutting slices so thin the seeds would slither out, and setting aside the juiciest fillet from the middle to eat last. There was an order in which to read the newspaper (sports, business, style, metro, front page). The two of you never left a football or a baseball game until the last second had ticked off the clock, regardless of a lopsided score or a ten-below windchill or being late to meet someone for dinner. He always carried a pen in his pocket and kept long lists of things to do and places to see on little yellow sticky notes inside his wallet.

Deliverance

Little Zooey

Little Zooey died today. Pam and I were in the backyard playing with the dogs when we heard a knock at the front door. Pam went around the side of the house to see who it was and came back a few minutes later with Zooey cradled in her arms. There was no blood, but the cat’s head hung slack, her tongue sticking out of her mouth. It was plain that she was dead. Pam was crying freely, and I felt a quick surge of grief myself.

May 2000

I want to live like a man who knows he’s going to die and knows that everyone he loves is going to die, yet remembers that life is an unfathomable mystery that neither birth nor death explains.

Lifestyles Of The Blind And Paralyzed

A Eulogy For Mark O’Brien

That O’Brien was out on the streets and not hidden away in some nursing home was a testament to his Irish dander. Remember, this is a man who — since the age of six — had the use of one muscle in his right foot, one muscle in his neck, and one in his jaw. That’s it. He made full use of all three. He used the foot muscle to steer his monster machine; he used the other two to bang with a stick on the keys of a computer, to write, cajole, editorialize, storm, cry, laugh, and rage. You tell me he wasn’t a nut case?

Midnight

The thin wall between this world and the next, midnight letters, warm milk and molasses

Driving Through Heavy Fog

Spring

This is what my mother, in the end, couldn’t bear: the forward rush of possibility, the hum of new life buzzing in the air as winter opens to spring. Surrounded by such sweet promise, she felt as empty as a footprint pressed in dried mud.