Old Person Poem in Two Parts
1)
my mother asleep
in her hot
nursing home
I sit
like a three-day airport delay
waiting
she's not dying—
it's not a vigil—
no one relieves me
she is 95, she is dying
slowly
I can't—
long enough to be—
patient, to be an ant
on the last peony
2)
the very old mostly sleep
the half-old kill time
the young dash to a brewery
when I was young
I smoked pot all day
it takes a wheelchair to get my thoughts to the table