Sean Sexton
Day’s Work
After he was brought into his room,
we split a cowboy shirt down the back, eased
his bruised arms through the sleeves
and he assumed the appearance of a sleepy
rancher, taking his noonday nap.
He went to death as to a day’s work,
got his shoulder into it as when he was thirteen
working at the dairy, milking a man’s worth
of cows before school. He said no to the feeding
tubes in quiet disappointment, having failed
the second swallowing test in the hospital.
Without news secreted among us he’d been
disabled by a stroke and any idea of which direction
to head, he closed his eyes, last words already spoken.
A mineral patience entered his face, same as
the afternoon he sat his horse, tied to the caught
heifer—hung up with a deformed calf I had to puzzle
out of her in the hour and a half it took, and there
he stayed, his pain subsumed as a forest into mist.
Through five days struggle crossing oceans of breath,
he journeyed between realms, the occult mastery
of heart and human tide at work in slow surcease.
The wait, the pain and distance, all he traversed
to overcome himself as we kept vigil, until
he found the narrow, difficult way out.