MY FATHER CROSSED THE THIRD AVENUE BRIDGE

as snow blanketed the row houses

and repair shops

the junkyards and factories

after he had spent two days

on a foldout cot

in a hospital room in the Bronx

watching his own father’s vital signs

flicker and flatline on a monitor

beside the bed so that a week

after a stroke paralyzed him

whatever was left of that old man

was gone like a wisp of smoke

seeping under the door and out a window

and like the river finding its way

to the harbor and the open sea

and beyond that the sea of light

whose cresting waves like snowcapped mountains

we may glimpse in this life

on those rare occasions

when all things seem possible