Elegy to a Grandson

My grandson, Joshua Bathe, passed away last April after being diagnosed with an aggressive cancer five months earlier. The following is my poetic tribute to him.

          Elegy to a Grandson

          Grief undulates
          like an inchworm
          and just as slowly.
          It forces one to use
          the conditional tense:
 
          He would have been . . .
          if he hadn’t . . .
 
          Or tugging the knot
          of time:
 
          He would have been . . .
          if he had . . .
 
          Died or lived.
 
          Flip a coin.
          Settle the issue
          once and for all.
          Wear the result
          like a raincoat,
          too snug,
          constricting the shoulders,
          like a strait-jacket,
          strangling the odd breath.
          His was a false start.
          Slotted into the space-time continuum
          too soon,
          he left the same way.
          What to make of
          the in-between?
          The eyelid’s blink
          before the leopard
          pounces on its shadow
          in a wading pool?
          He sang the lyrics
          not knowing how the tune
          would end:
 
          “. . . remind me
          of a warm safe
          place
          where as a child
          I’d hide
          and pray for the thunder
          and the rain
          to quietly
          pass me by.”
 
          In the event of (you know),
          do not resuscitate:
          instructions of
          a young man
          encrypted in genetic code
          inscrutable
          as a roll of the dice.
          Then snake eyes.
 
          If only a woman
          would marry him
          for a few minutes.
          Fists thunder
          toward Heaven’s throne
          where sits gloating
          the craftiest trickster
          of them all.
          And we are left to
          muse at the not-ness
          and never-will-be
          of our own exquisite
          efforts
          to avoid using
          the past tense.
 
 
**Featured Image Source: pxhere/ unknown photographer/ CCO