Operation Poetry: Last Few Moments

As I struggled to even figure out if I had a voice as they say in the poetry world, I often vacillated between abstract and the more concrete as some of the examples I’ve posted have shown.  This is another one like Moment One: Last Few Moments

Old Mr. Aqaba shuffles by,
hat in hand, asking for Celia.
He thinks it’s 1950
He’s going to propose tonight.

A friend at school worked a local assisted living hospital in the Hill Country. He told me the story of a new patient who had arrived and spent his entire time asking where someone named Celia was before finally passing away in his sleep a week or two after arriving.  When his family came for his effects they explained he’d been that way for a while, Celia was his wife who had passed away.  This bothered me for some time and I ended up adding in the part about instead of looking for her because he didn’t know she was gone, that he was in a happier time in his last few days.

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