II.
Careful, grandfather:
on this last visit, anything you say
I may attempt to turn into poetry.
How much of what we say gets canonized in verse
depends not on our own significance
but on the skill of the poet.
I am not so good with words
to make mundane days
become magic.
But I watch your gaze
trace blank page space
in between us.
You only asked one thing of me before:
that I tell you what you could pray for.
Now, you leave me, after my third of your ninety years,
with one inheritance.
Now, eyes fogged over but no less locked on mine,
you make what will be your last request of me,
for the moment
and for the remainder of my own stay:
“Would you pray?”
And so the Great Poet rests his pen on the paper
in between us.
Here we share the one bond, the one chain, the one trust
that can free us.