Prayers for My Father
I was with him, back then,
on a cold, wet and windy night
in early September – a night for ghosts
and giving up, yet also for some peace
in the going – a release from long,
slow sickness and the hours
in which this vital, dramatic man
had dwindled to skin and bone
with barely a voice or breath,
as he lay helpless under the bedspread
and a few late-summer flies
gathering like jackals on the ceiling.
Mother had just pulled me
out of a groggy sleep,
her urgent voice like a tow line
that dragged me into her room.
She handed me a red book
and hurried downstairs to the telephone
to spread the expected news.
I knelt down and mumbled
a few prayers for the dying,
watching him in his gaunt stillness
while I held on to the book
as if it were the cup of salvation.
I paused; there was one more breath –
a short, halting puff of air
as his lungs pushed up and out,
then fell back into his body
like a tired old bellows,
or someone shifting to a deeper sleep.
The room, too, seemed to take a breath
as if to honour his passage –
the brief but graceful farewell
of spirits gathered in a sacred space,
before they settled into a silence as deep
as the holiest prayer you could imagine.
© John Morris