And then he is gone

for my grand­father, Sydney Levine, on the night of his death
In the end, his bird-like hands
Clutched to his chest, skin like vellum.
It is on that parch­ment we write our stories,
On this man we weave our tales.
He is our silent audi­ence, breath shallow,
As we scrawl our eph­em­era on his brow,
Smooth his fore­arms with trips to mountains,
Brush his hair with strains of pan flutes
Wet his lips with movies we have seen
Hold his hand and sing to him,
Sum­mer­time and blackbirds,

His mouth is open like a chick
And we feed him tid­bits we have rehearsed.
This is the ritual of waiting
This is the ritual of incorporation
No time and all time, space and sighing
We create tales of mys­tics and magic carpets,
Astro­nomers and mathematicians.
We layer our memor­ies onto this man,
Pal­impsest of his­tor­ies, thirties ditties
And choked-back tears.
He is becom­ing some­thing other.
And then he is gone.