By Steven Luria Ablon
Every death is different,
every monologue of wind,
every cloud dappled sky,
every spongy trail of moss.
My friend with pancreatic cancer
called each of us in his last hours.
My friend with lung cancer agreed
to two more infusions hoping
she could go to California to see
the new house where her son and
his family would live. And my father
in his one hundredth year strapped
to the bed with a feeding tube, confused,
disoriented as they planned further
interventions gripped my arm, looked me
in the eye, said, let’s go, come on, come on.
Steven Luria Ablon, poet and adult and child psychoanalyst, teaches child psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and publishes widely in academic journals. He won Academy of American Poets’ Prize 1961 and the National Library of Poetry, Editor’s Choice Award 1994. His poems have appeared in many anthologies and magazines. His collections of poetry are “Tornado Weather,” Mellen Poetry Press, Lewiston, New York, 1993, “Flying Over Tasmania”, The Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1997, “Blue Damsels,” Peter E Randall Publisher, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 2005, “Night Call,” Plain View Press, Auston, Texas, 2011, and “Dinner in the Garden,” Columbia, South Carolina, 2018.