"Gone" by Mary Soon Lee

Gone

Mary Soon Lee

The words weren't at the hospital,

all those long days Gary sat

by his dad's bed, listening.

     

He just wanted a couple of sentences--

the clock's hands wound back

for one more joke about the Pirates

throwing a ball game.

     

Afterward,

he cleaned out his dad's house:

pillows steeped in tobacco;

thirty-year-old jackets

almost in fashion again;

fishing rods lined up like soldiers;

boxes of intricate handmade baits;

a house full of things

saying their last words.

Poet's Notes:  This poem is about a fictional character but draws, inevitably, on my own experience of my parents dying. The details are different--no tobacco, no fishing rods--but the emotions are universal. Reading an article entitled “A Million Words” by Dave Barry, about his own father dying, triggered the poem. It was a grief-stricken piece in a book of humorous articles, and it was heart wrenching.