En Passant
My father takes his dying
slow. “Why should I get out of bed anymore?” he asks
his nurses. They roll
him over like a great beached sperm whale so he won’t get
bed sores.
Because his lungs have become congested,
every morning
for ten minutes they put him on a breathing machine,
which breathes back
medicinal mist into the vacuum bags of his lungs
tired of sucking
in, out, in, out. Father do you remember
teaching me
to play chess? You showed me how to capture a pawn
en passant. Your lightning
attacks routed my men. Now, on your good days, you take half an hour
to make each move
and must ask my daughter, “Which side is mine?” She replies,
“Grandfather, yours
are the white pieces.” Yesterday morning, when she asked your long-dead
brother’s name, you smiled
ruefully and said, “That doesn’t ring any bells with me. But then again
I don’t have many
bells to ring.” We couldn’t help laughing. A nurse comes to check
your blood pressure.
Death will take you en passant, when we least expect it,
moving diagonally
from one column to another, white square to white
square, side-stepping
behind you, silent black pawn. En passant
meaning “in passing”
or “by the way.” Why have our lives been only
this casual conversation
between two distant acquaintances, who stop on the street to exchange
pleasantries about
tornado warnings, then say goodbye, and pass on
to their next
errand? Is there no final colloquy, no grand finale to be performed
between us?
Late afternoons you grow marvelously incoherent.
You tell me, “I’m sure
we can come to some understanding. But where are the people
who represent
the beach, the trees, the party favors?” I don’t know how
to answer. We watch
snow flurries swirl furiously in the dusk outside your window.
We are cut-glass
figures of passersby in a cut-glass town submerged
in the waters
of a glass globe, which a bored child shakes and shakes to see
the snow,
which has settled to the ground, fly up again, whirl
and eddy.
Night, like black confetti, finally drifts down.
[First published in Flying Island, Spring/Summer 2007]
Copyright 2007 by the Tipton Poetry Journal.
All rights remain the exclusive property of the individual poet and may not be used without their permission.