Prayer with Nothelfer

Die soon, father, in your own
bed, an eighty-year-old moon
cooling your youthful cheek,
loons calling from the lake
where you fished for bass, casting
your line casually, testing
your skill against your father’s,
silence falling like feathers
as the canoe drifted . . . Die soon,
as your mother rolls the Sunday küchen
and you sprawl by the fire, drawing
pictures of the Green Knight and Gawain
as your sister practices a polonaise . . .
Die soon, in the torn-down house
on Stark Street, where no one fought
...