1.

It’s practical, I’ve read, to picture death.

To plan (with broken hands)

                                                for those who go              into the fields we could not sow—

           it’s practical,                  but still I have no will.

    Could I measure all     I’d owe

                                        you both—postcards, HMOs, my love

          expressed in shoveled snow—                and leave it here?

That’s good—this sanding down                           of splintered wood.            

2.

My son, you gather                       sticks & bark:

                                                     pistols, throttles           to dreamt-up cars & shuttles—

               the harvest of our evening walk.

                               You blast me again and again.                              I mime my most dramatic end

            and wonder if you wonder

about a world in which we’re mist                    or less,

                                      in which we scatter

                                                            through brick & branch,          birdbath & mulch?

3.                                                                                         

A friend thinks it cruel                 to teach you we go—calls it perverse.

That’s naïve.

                        Kids have always imagined worse,          notching

                                           their darker thoughts           into the fabric of their preschool cots.

            Sleep alone                 

            permits them—sweet                dissemblers, their parents’ protectors—                         

                                                             to dredge up demons.        

   I watch the seismic shudder                                of a nightmare you will not share               

4.

and press your pitching hand                 into my chest.                                       

                     Feel the tremor                 that holds me

              here, but stay awhile—little starfish,

       little ear—and it’ll crest                                           in paroxysmal roar.    

                                                This happens more and more—a tock-tick

that tips to chronic.

My secret fear?        This heart is yours.                       

             With age, the docs say, a-fib cascades.              They also note, it’s all inborn.         

5.

Hot or cold: I get, I guess, to pick,

               which probe                        to thread from crotch to chest            

                                                           and pass                   (oh yay) into my broken heart.

                        This part hurts most:                                  I’m made cliché.  

The hot’s exact

            but can cause holes—like an eraser                rubbed too hard on paper.

The cold cannot, but it might shock                          the phrenic nerve.

                                    Both recircuit (i.e. scar)                                        this mis-wired atrial wall.

6.

But if I linger longer     

here—if I stall with your stuffed animals—                     

                                                              then more of me          sneaks past                 

            the anesthetic’s leaden pour.                                         My tactic’s your unspoken adage:

filibuster what you can’t manage.

Still, I know where I’m headed:                          

                             ablate this fucking heart                              before it’s too late.

                           Think reward, think risk.                              If I don’t wake up, you’ve still got this.  

7.

How, you’d ask, does a-fib feel?  

Like a flickering florescent bulb;               like the dips                   in a country road.      

                                                                  And it hits like hiccups         or divine indifference—

                                                few episodes, in short, have an M.O.  

            Drink more, drink less;            yoga Wednesdays,                    five deep breaths—

it’s all pretense.                                    Our bodies are less

you or me                              than leaves                      whipped into a T-storm.

                                                                                   I see mine trailing an I.V. like a kite string                                          

8.

and dream of crimes                                  I would commit

to keep you & your mom near:                  I’d torch our language’s last book.

                                                                   I’d flay endangered species on tenterhooks.

             I’d warehouse summer.                                                         I’d Persephone each hour.                  

It doesn’t help.

I imagine your mother               stroking a future spouse’s steadfast pulse 

                               or you,        remaking me        through story—

                                                            I’m a roll of iPhone photos & shitty, self-indulgent journals.

9.

Scuff on your sneakers                         after a walk,

the swish of the dishwasher                 while we three read books;

                                  the dog’s claws clicking                      down the uncarpeted stairs,

           bedrooms cool, a curtain          of air—

                that patchwork of weeds

                that brush us                                    as we trudge to the bus stop;

                                                                        mice mazing round this 100-year-old brickwork;

   and our days like bright ivy               growing into the attic.

10. 

Dip me in these

moments before the incision—

                             let the knife remind me                   of life’s real crime:

                             you can only record                        scant bits of it before you die.

            Or let’s just revel

 in one more lazy weekend—laundry               festooned in rings, the New York Times,

                          the languorous sway             of our porch swing—

                                          tattoo those hours here.                                                    Let them sting.      

11.

Ditto the bon mots & mottos,

       the lessons I would—decades hence—press               on you.       

                                                                                       Can I pluck a few from future me                 

                                                and seed them now        pre-surgery?              

Take the bus when you can;                  fuck that line you’ll hear (be a man); 

Spurn comma splices                           but not satisfying vices—     

and when some old dude                      opines about the past,        question him—               

                                                                                                                   especially if he’s your dad.

12.

But—leave something more

          than what your namesake       saw outdoors: the afterlife as lawn.   

                                                         In other words,               will some scrap of self to live on.

               A patent, garden, kids, or poem—              you pick.

          But steel yourself against its loss,

which’ll probe your peripheral vision—                like a smoke detector’s               

                                                                             red button                  or that bat

                        I caught in a recycling bin.                       That’s one I left: my big, homeowner win.              

13.

Improv, I think, is just like life.

We move to cues—                the only plan, yes, and?

                                                                because yes, no                would be the end of the show—

              the dust motes drift;       the curtain grows old.                    

       Last year I watched

              some revelers—their limbs gave in                to purest play—

as they crept, leapt, & listened                                      to my colleague’s lyrical direction:          

                           “Let gold crowns lift you off the ground”                           and they rise

14.

weightless         as the sky.

I wish                that I were inhibition-less, trusting

                                               enough—one guy crumbles       like “a statue in surf”—

         to fall or fail.                 Instead I fear                

I’ve taught you to fear         risk (one more parental whiff). 

                                    I watch them mimic drunks, get stuck                    to boards, or hoard

              one intoxicating posture.

                                                  I watch them—my god—learn:                 the only wrong answer              

15.

is inaction.

Is that the trick—to see                          all gifts (wife, kid)

                as evanescent                         bliss; to know                     imagination is all                                                           

we can control;                  and to play right through

our use-by date?

            (A young man, his jaguar prowl            now done, gnaws a Clif Bar.)                                

      Shall we bid adieu to delays?

      Shall I end this dithering      that keeps the cardiologist at bay?

16.

Small son—here comes your tiger & your pig.

They paw your arm

                                    and climb the amber light of your alarm.         I leave this room

       to them                 & dreams.

         Maybe heaven isn’t real, you mused                         today as I tied our shoes, 

but it should include endless hallways with endless books.

May yours lift up                               from the floor

                                                          then land upon your bed like tents.

17.

A possum paws the fence.

The compost shrugs its rinds and pits.

Branches whisk                                        the moonlight pooling in the bowls of my glasses.

                 Your mother’s ankle               pins me to the mattress.          

       An ambulance’s caterwaul

                                  dopplers            down the road; a window           

                                                                         splashes red, resets—                     it’s evening.     

                                                                                   Life passes into pages if it passes into anything.

18.

Love, do you still count sheep?

I now count shelves,                                        a tapestry          

                        of selves (not souls)            that any finger might release.

                                                  You know they’ve got spines too—             that’s right, they do.    

Let’s peek inside         

the oldest we can find              and—feel its uneven edge?—knife

                                                the final pages free. 

                                                Can you hear it,        like a patient, whisper:      thank god you opened me.  

NOTES

1.4                    “I have no will”: a lapse that has since been corrected.

5.1-8               Ablation procedures continue to evolve, as does their glossary of terms. The two methods mentioned here are radio

frequency ablation (RF) and cryo-ablation (CB), which risk cardiac tamponade and phrenic nerve palsy (PNP),

respectively.

12.2                  “the afterlife as lawn”: his namesake is Walt Whitman.

13.7                  “my colleague’s lyrical direction”: I’m indebted to Heidi Winters Vogel for a job talk that became the basis for this scene.

17.8                  “Life passes into pages if it passes into anything”: James Salter’s memoir, Burning the Days

(1997). With thanks to Adrianne Frech, who sent me a signed copy.