Coronach

My father surrendered in his sleep
to an allegorical, ridiculous death
from alcohol and pharmaceuticals.
It reads like Aesop or Proverbs.

His long-ago use of the harder
was weened onto the smaller;
whiskey, vicodin, a bog attempt,
countering dizziness by swift turns
that seldom saw beyond tumbling.

So infamous seem memories of him,
other memories come to me swarmed
in unlikely connections.

The moral of the story is moderation.

My notions on fairness, and loss,
are of being cheated or forgotten, worse,
forgetting, cheating another's memory.
My thoughts resemble the unvindicated
whines of baby dislodged from certainty,
henceforth, boy disturbed by necessity
and fortitude, herewith, man.

The moral of the story is familial.

His disposition, living,
and his remarkability, dead,
envelope my sense like fog through kale.