Now

Now

He was dying of life.
It was a terminal disease.
He couldn’t remember a time
He wasn’t sick with it.
His daughters came to see him.
In therapy and in calls
That turned their phones 
Hot in their hands,
They’d agreed that sometimes
His hand had lingered too long,
Remembered how, after
Their mother died
(Of cancer, not of life)
He’d sometimes shuffle in
In the middle of the night
And lie down next to them
In their sweet-smelling beds.
Now they surrounded his.
An atheist, he had nothing
To look forward to.
He wouldn’t see
Their mother at the age
She’d been when she died,
Nor his parents, who
They barely remembered,
Having died young from living
Among the mills of Scranton.
Now he was dying and
Couldn’t exactly admit
He was scared, or ask
That a priest be brought in.
But on the last day,
When hospice whispered
It was just a matter now
Of keeping him comfortable,
His fear eclipsed his stubbornness
And he began calling out
For dark things — the dark
Book he hadn’t peered into
Since he was a boy,
The man with dark hair
Young enough to be his
Son had he had a son,
His dark vestments flowing
Behind him in his haste
To get there in time.
He was coming,
His daughters promised him,
Coming through the dark
(though outside it was day)
As fast as he could,
He would be there
Any moment, they promised 
Him, any moment
Now.