Joe

Perhaps he doesn't hear,
sitting in the TV chair.
I think he doesn't see.
Looks like he's fast asleep to me.

Maybe he's too far away,
if he is in fact awake
to know what all we say.

As I curl her hair, she tells me
about how life is different 
now that he is old 
and so much went wrong.
He has become more needful
than the day is long.

She says she used to play
and go and play and go,
but those days are gone.

It's time for me to say good bye
and get back home.
I wave to his closed eyes,
not sure which one of them is more alone.
Perhaps he doesn't hear.

3/1/08 
djl

Mrs. Joe

Now I no longer do her hair.
She has none -- it's gone from chemotherapy.
Now she is more needful than he,
her Joe, and the reason her life got slow.

Until this, so she knits
right close to the fire stove;
there in the sock cap,
covering the no hair.

Joe seems more perky now.
No longer in his nap, new light in his eyes,
he sits up close next to his wife.

More had gone wrong for her somehow,
which seems to have brought him back
or she seems to have joined his space
and so...

to me they look much more together,
here in their new 'each other' place,
than separated by good health last year...
that gap closed by the difference twelve months can make.

3/8/09 
djl