the final poem

who will come to greet it?

what message

will it send to my living son

or my unborn daughter

never conceived, but somehow

conceived anyway?

will it mourn the strike-

three call at my knees

as it works its way into

baseball lore, the closing stanza

where it belongs

with the treasures behind the wonderland

of chromium hood ornaments?

will it mourn cats?

will it pontificate on the celestial

virtues of the X-tra Mart, glistening

beneath its silvery florescence, smeared

in the scents of clinging body odors,

processed sugars and complex carbohydrates?

will my last poem read like a vagabond

confessional finding me seeking water

as did my father in the fading

atmosphere of intensive care?

what will come into being but to be doomed

at my withered hand from whence

will come the final poem?