my father is floating on his back on a bed
of black water   his last bed in his last
hours of life and with each rising
breath   he is trying to push out
from the dock into deeper more
merciful water nobody can see
to the end of

in photographs you can see death
waiting not in some calculated way   death not
plotting to snatch him up the second he stops
like a trophy won out over life   nothing like that
only my father is drifting and it’s not death
lying in wait    it’s my father calculating
his passage towards it

death is a location   an island
in the middle of a night time lake or the black
water of the lake itself   he is trying to get there
float there on his back where you can see death
looking at stars and not calculating my father
written on the screen of that same sky
waiting to be snatched up the second he stops