Grampa

The ash crept slowly

toward your bent and wrinkled hand

as you sat on the porch.

Blue smoke rising straight up to the sky,

grey smoke whooshing from weary lungs,

forming a halo around your head.

All day long you sat

on a faded, creaking lawn chair,

gazing dimly, vaguely,

where water and horizon met.

The point lay green and wild

on the other side,

but your eyes stretched only to

the hawk above the trees

at the end of the pasture.

On cold days you wore a sweater

but didn’t seem to notice

your breathy cloud, the icy air,

or the fog weaving around boats

plying the choppy waters.

When the sun sank into its nightly bed,

and orange and red turned violet blue,

you grasped the aluminum armrests

and stiffly rose onto slippered feet, yawning.

You shuffled through the back door

into the kitchen where dinner was waiting,

and when I asked what you had been doing,

you replied, “Nothing.”