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.