One by fire,
four at will
(one who’d hang,
one who’d pull
the plug on his
own ventilator,
one who’d hit
the crowded water
just beneath
the Golden Gate,
one who learned
to operate
a shotgun
bought an hour past)
one too slowly,
one too fast,
two from age
(one broken hip,
one too weak
to wake from sleep),
one who’d slip
(a cliff-side path),
one surgery’s
botched aftermath,
one who wept,
one who prayed
one heart, alas,
ineptly made
one who moved
a single thumb,
(ALS
her conundrum:
brain intact
while body withers),
cancer of course
for all the others.
