Day to day I don’t know if my father
is hurtling toward twilight or dawn
is just a long time coming.

His mouth is full of stops and starts
and we try to decipher the new
language of words he can’t remember.

We measure him in half-cups and sips.
We pray the steady rise and fall of him
like a rosary of relief and longing.

We memorize each knot of his spine
like a rosary of bone and moaning.
We do not know if we should pray

for an end or a beginning.
We pray instead in icepacks
and extra pillows and cans of nutritions.

We pray not with knees pressed to the ground
nor with tongues busy with sacred groanings.
We pray instead with hands busy with

the work of my father. We pray as if
he is not sand, he is not air.
We pray as if the benediction of our

hands on the sags and folds of him is enough.