Home Health Aid

.
…Ahgreyeuss has been wandering in Santa Cruz
and has come into a wooden house where
he has found an old man walking

There is film
in the windows
                 that casts a blue-green
    light     that fills
                                                     the old man’s house
and it goes to the old man’s head
He is moving wet with inherent purpose
His age is dream                                                   

Ahgreyeuss                                                       
            standing in the room sees     for a moment
                                                        the old man’s shade
before he retires
to his privacy

Ahgreyeuss now                                         
explores the humid house              
                                  running from scene to scene
                                                  room to room       wooden
                    floor
                     walls
                           ceiling…

…after a time
Ahgreyeuss comes to the old man’s bath
                                                                        and sees him
bathing in trance—                
the old man
                         rises out of the water
and Ahgreyeuss towels him               
                           listening to him speak
                                            of having heard things
The man asks curiously                                
of what he heard

“Was it ‘possum
               raccoon
       rat?”

Ahgreyeuss helps him search
assuaged with dream
                                              filling the hours before death—
                   The old man looks at Ahgreyeuss
                 with mock wonder
               saying

“the living-room”
and there
                                       as a cat stares
                                        from the sill
                                                           outside the window
two lumps appear beneath the rug                              
and the old man says                                                  

“Two lumps                               
                 it was two lumps that I heard”

And Ahgreyeuss runs his hand over the lumps
                                      that move slowly under the braids
                    thinking that they are kittens
                                                                 and wondering
how kittens                                         
could have lifted the heavy rug