Hospice

He blinks in and out in a wingchair, overhears what visitors say when patients can be talked about as if not there. People speak well of the dying, even of dying strangers, to him their words prematurely shovel earth. The terminally sick must be accommodated, penciled into time slots, eased gently into oblivion. He listens as he slips downstream on a raft of morphine. These last trips are scenes taken from childhood books. His own life story has become absurd, it is almost as if he is a character in someone else's life, a Huckleberry Finn whistling through Dantes Inferno. What he really wants is a rocking horse and ice-cream. A nurse brings him ice-cream, but it's the wrong flavor. He wonders if anyone can see the horse he rides upon, his ten-gallon hat is as white as a flying nun's Cornette. The occasional visitors watch the dying in dreadful relief. Hypnotic minds drone like trapped bee's. Frank Sinatra jets in from wonderland, hands him a coloring book. If only he had crayons to fill in the blanks.