national poetry month, day twenty-nine: robert currie

For a Poet Facing the End

You live in a narrow bed and wait for death
while I lift and work with your limp left arm
and listen to your steady, rasping breath,
the ventilator easing our alarm.
Your right arm in turn, your legs, your feet
I life, rotate and rub--it's exercise
or passes for that in one who once was fleet
in mind and body, though now your thighs
are shrunken to a fraction of your mind,
which rails and shakes like any frantic child
who rages at his parents--dumb and blind--
and needs only half a chance to run wild,
but you, your voice silenced, a final drought,
you mourn for every poem you can't get out.

Currie, Robert. "For a Poet Facing the End" Poet to Poet. Roorda, Julie and Elana Wolff, eds. Toronto: Guernica Editions, Inc., 2012. 137.