AS FATHER LAY DYING

restrained in bed,

he wanted to go home,

but he clung to a phone

grunting orders to his broker

about trades of puts and calls.

Family maintained a vigil,

reading Barons, Business Week

and the Wall Street Journal

to keep him alive.

His quivering voice, a pinhole

of light in the emerging darkness.

Clinging to the last of his breath

he was determined to secure

a vault of safety for Mother.

While the forces of Darkness

tugged at his soul, relentless

in his sense of responsibility,

his withered body focused on

tallying up the numbers

like a good accountant should.

Father taught me to be responsible.

When I lay dying, I’ll revise my poems,

making sure the alliteration,

enjambment and internal rhymes

work well enough for publication.

I’ll keep reading what old Ez taught me

at Ezuversity about how to write poetry

until my eyes give out and I disappear.

Entwined by blood of my blood,

a strike price of love endures.

Father will always be my King

even though we walk divergent roads