It is near the end,
and I hear now clearly
these hallucinations
told as vivid stories
from the manifestations
of a very old man,
semi-awake on a
hospital bed.

Fragmented for sure,
but told with conviction and truth,
and an intensity that
reveals their declination.

Stories of times long ago,
tinged with guilt,
with urgent regret,
with courage and fear
that unfurl from a buried flag,
and with an ancient fresh pain
that might have been dulled
by years but is not.

He lies in this chamber ,
alone, vulnerable,
blind, dependent,
with nurses walking
by and in and out,
yet only the lucid dreams
from other days keep
him company and possess him,
in this time near the end where
life is turned over for
it nuggets of final truth
to form this loose narrative
that belongs to him.

Tangled up, he is,
in this terror that goes
on, and on, with revelations
and secrets long forgotten,
but not forgotten at all,
and I am here as witness to
these artefacts never
written and little told that
open out the life of a person,
a human very much like me.

 

4/3/2024