Keith Garebian: ADAM’S FINAL TRUTH

So rare was his warm touch on my head or skin

I cannot remember it, the waters of childhood

turning murky with faults, foam receding

from toes in sand as I watched him battle

the waves, a feeling of things shrinking

away from me underfoot. He was powerful

then, his muscled body glistening,

his legs contesting currents. I thought

for a while he was the strongest man

in the world, one who could tame the sea,

command the beach, own a kingdom.

He was a romance—his body

magnified, separating light

from darkness, forcing water

to swallow defeat.

Cancer shrank him in old age.

I was not with him when death came

in the municipal hospital, his lips

parched, the intravenous drip silent,

moonlight grim upon the window.

He died in his sleep, unable to reach

for water on the table, unable to gasp out

his plague of thirst. His mouth

a small black hole, caught

with grotesque suddenness

in the rigor mortis of unspoken

havoc. It locked open

in a silent, parched cry.

A strong man shrunk 

into the final truth of mortality.

How small his emaciated body seemed,

its bones and shrivelled skin

relics of an ultimate

abandonment.

But he has grown

in me as I stir memory’s water:

His story from another century

bearing me with it, washing away

darkness, despair, devastation,

yet leaving the face

of a dead man, diminished

in body, and a dry ground

for reconciliation—

his shadow in the grave,

and a pain greater

than pain, immeasurable

distance from here

to heaven, unforgivable.

This poem from the collection Children of Ararat appears in APP with kind permission of the author, Keith Garebian.