Got in town last night,
and I’ll leave today by dinner.
I’ve already met with his lawyer,
so once this room is gone over,
keepsakes for his grandkids
packed to remember him by,
it’ll be back on the highway home.  

Or maybe not so quickly.
I might need some extra time.  

I’ve found the steno pad,
the one he and his doctors,
the priest and few visitors,
relied on for conversation
when the deafness was complete
and he couldn’t hear his own pain.  

At the top of the last-used page,
in the script of his favorite nurse,
the one who cried when she
tried to hug our shared sorrow away,
How are you today, Carl?  

And in his childish, crude letters,
all he had left with memories gone,
I’m dieng