I sat with him alone in the hospice room.
The breathing machine noises made a nap-drowse
muddle of me and I nearly lost sight of his star receding
from here to some galaxy far from where he was,
a place utterly unlike the stern man I knew,
who was so cool to the touch. He would often
cite Kant—that it was better to think than feel,
until he suffered a private revival on learning
of his cancer, a death sentence in three quick acts.
He asked me to call him “Pop” rather than “Father,”
his feelings, new, under siege—he, now, less a man
and more a near naked patient with no room to move
but away, as he became less “star” and more a small
part of an unknown galaxy, warm in the night sky.