REVELATION

"I've got something to show you," he says,
voice fuzzy, eyes fogged by morphine.
"Make sure the women are gone."
A quick corridor glance. Starched light
bends to waiting-room hum--
the kids' channel-surfing,
our wives' huddled voices.

"Close the door." His hands,
callused still, scrabble his belly, faint
caking of grease near the nails
stark on sheets hitching implacably up.
I see tubes leaking pink,
pale yellow into pouches of plastic:
all systems sinking,
siphoned
down the dark maw of cancer.

"Give me . . ." he says; drops off.
Soft beeps punctuate
jags of stertorous breath. I touch
microwaved skin, see
broken teeth, remember us
in another dim room,
remember
a midnight car, whishing Memorial Way.
We're leaving his son's bachelor party
still gently lit, girlie film
playing the backs of our eyes. We
pause at a light. He says suddenly:
"I'm a failure. Sucked
out of a job I was good at. You're
young still, but me,
I've got just these."
He holds up hands
bathed red, then green

as my foot fumbles for gas.
Night swallows any answer I have.
The dash is a ditch full of animal eyes.

beep beep beep

The ellipsis of sound blinks him awake.
"Give me a hand," he says, waves
at the bedclothes. I finish
lifting the sheets. He draws up his gown:
"Look. My bag. Full again."
I nose through fetor of smegma,
glance down his yellowing groin,
past his penis, limp, filling with blood,
to the scrotum
empty since surgery now red, swollen--
a baby boy's, except for its size. I choke,
want to hold this part of this man
not my father. Want to run from the room.

He eases gown down again. "It's the damnedest thing.
I go in for kidney stones, come out with
no stones at all. Now this."
He laughs, moist-eyed.
"All right. You can open the door now."