Poem for My Father [“The sprayed cockroach doesn’t know”]

The sprayed cockroach doesn’t know

it’s already dead.

                           It’ll scratch around 

behind the refrigerator 

                                    while I read my book

about Augustus, emperor of Rome.

The past,

               I was late to learn, 

doesn’t exist 

                   outside the imagination. 

Your final night, 

I held the water glass just so,

                                             put the straw to your lips.

We both knew it was the end.

For some reason,

the moment I sprayed that cockroach,

I remembered your hospital bed

                                                  exactly as it had been.

A stinging mist fell over it.

You drank and drank 

as if there would be another day for you. 

That I loved you was, I hope, 

implicit

             even as you were slipping 

into history.

In the white alcove, 

the night nurse laughed 

into her black cell phone.

Someone pushed a tray of pills

                                                down the hallway,

around the corner,

                             and into the past.