My grandfather’s old Harvard chair sits
bare in the basement of my mother’s house.
A scuttle of dust rushes off
when someone brushes by.
On its back: the inlaid emblem
of a school that did as much for his career
as would have a tool in one hand
and a nail in the other. My mother
said he never found his calling –
sitting, instead, in an office,
stalling the end that would come:
the thrumping of his heart
stuttering forward, an uneven march
of blood like boot camp soldiers
still finding the rhythm and ground.
My grandmother found him clutching
his breastbone, leaning forward,
gasping for air that would not come.
A decade later, they moved the chair
out of sight. There, it could not remind us
of how a night can turn a gasp to silence.
The ways a man can fade.
