Collection of Random Poems

Gratitude

What could you have possibly been dreaming of,

As you lay stoic under the white linens of the hospital bed

Needles protrude from your pale skin, translucent

Shafts coiled along your arms and chapped upper lip?

What did you think when brought to the medical center

In Sebring, Florida, frazzled, confused, while fighting to

Contain the shooting pain pulsating from your fragile heart?

By what means were you ordained to undergo such torment,

Like a criminal leather-bound to a rickety, wooden chair,

While a voracity of electricity scorched and charred the

Remnants that constituted your existence?  What were the odds

That you'd survive several years of pain and misery, especially

Amongst a household of conceited daughters.  I appreciated

The monotone rises and falls of the mountains upon the monitor.

My mind opened to the prospect, the anticipation of you

Escaping the blanched wards, the idiotic nurses, and detrimental

Doctors. How did you ever become ensnared in such an ordeal?

Today, while the heat sears through the thin fabric upon my

Back, I think of your towering frame overshadowing my

Petite physique – pride, a common totem by which you have

Upheld since your days in the Navy.  The sharp notes of the

Bugles pierced the dark recesses of my conscience, while your

Olive irises film over.  Why must it come to this?  Departing from

The quarters into the antiseptic hallway, with salty tears rolling

And melding into the pores along the contours of my grimace,

I wished for someone, anyone at all, to dispel your agony and

Reinvigorate your former dignified self, so that I may once more

Convey my gratitude for the years of grandfatherly compassion

I most desperately yearned for in my life.