"The Late MacBeth."

[ishyface]

His body divorced him slowly
like a flock of birds leaving
a wire, one set of wings at a time-
still in sight, but past retrieving.

Extremities first, his right foot
dropping asleep, forcing a limp
until the left faltered numb,
conspiring to abort every step.

Fingers and tongues deadened, as if
wrapped in a muffle of feather down-
each affliction painless and shameful,
like a ship run aground in sand.

His infant child seemed to chase him,
her development a mirror
image of his progressive loss;
her wonder, reversed, his terror.

Still, he got on with things, wrote
the last poems, read. Tried to swallow
the panic that galled his throat,
never mentioned the dream of crows.

After his voice abandoned him
his wife scissored an alphabet
and they relearned the grace of words:
letters raised like a wick, and lit.

At the end he was stripped of all
but that fire, its sad, splendid
glow. When his wife offered him
the sedative they knew would end it

he asked "How long will I sleep?"
spelled it out, letter by letter.
The fear had left them both by then.
She told him, "Until you're better."

- "The Late MacBeth", by Michael Crummey