In the Wee Hour of Life

My father-in-law,

Lucidity, blinking and broken

Declares his life a night,

a forgotten dimension.

So fast,  where

Did it go?

He is still outside

The forest of human

Travel

Following the script

Of human hand

That began in sand and

Grit

 A hand that sent him to war

To love

To fatherhood

To the hearts of those

Who would wash his sluggish body

Wrinkled, tissue depleted

Immobilized by an angry destiny

And landscapes of untold design

And still he wonders why –

The three letter

Through the looking-glass question

Whose answer awaits in the forest

Where the path – trodden slight –

Will call – he is moving there

To that forest where flowering

Dogwood bloom in wait

For his steps light and inoffensive

Like he

A child in this fractal world

Enfolding unto himself the same

As we’ve always known

Even as he is resorbed

By nature – that path

He will trod, swaddled in linen

Looking ahead in painless

Expectation