They came into
this cold white room
and shaved his chest
then made a little
purple line of dashes
down his sternum,
which the surgeon,
when she came in,
cut along, as students
took turns cranking
a shiny metal jig
that split his ribs
just enough for them
to fish the heart out—
lungs inflating
as for the second time
since dawn they skirted
the ruined arteries
with a long blue length
of vein that someone
had unlaced from his leg,
so that by almost every definition,
my father died
there on the table
and came back in the body
of his own father,
or his mother at the end,
or whoever it was
the morphine summoned
up out of the grave, into his dreams—
as we inched a fluid-hung
telemetry pole
past the endless open doors,
until he was finally close enough
to recognize a flicker
in those bloodshot eyes
and a quiver in the mumbling lips—
so slack and thin
he leaned a little closer
to catch their ghostly whisper
before he even
realized it was him.