the final poem

who will come to greet it?

what message

will it send to my living son,

and 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

women have laid in my arms

behind the wonderland of chromium

hood ornaments?

will it mourn cats?

will it mourn the great unknown?

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 complicated

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?