Dying Slowly Copyright © Fraser Harrison 2009

Reading by Richard Whiting

My father’s dying
slowly. Aren’t we all?
Too slow to skip pain,
he hobbles, stick and stocking,
to his grave. Can’t hurry Death:
all in his own bad time.
Rotting from its prostate,
his root turned into Death’s
tool; cell by cell,
he’s inching into his corpse.

Death lives,
a lodger, in their house;
watches telly with them,
sits in the best chair,
hogs the conversation,
keeps my mother awake
whetting his scythe,
stone hissing on the blade,
bleeding my father,
drop by drop.

At grave’s edge,
feet dangling,
he’s become a baby,
fed and nursed
by my, now his
mother. He fears
dying, not death; fears
pain, not the night
his cock-a-doodle-doo
will never rouse.

We’re not reconciled, father
and son. I have my guilt,
he his grievances. He can’t see
beyond his own grave: no grief
for my mother’s to come.
He’s just dying
to be friends with Death,
hopes to wheedle him
into killing kindly.
Don’t we all?