Rob Jacques
Prayer for My Caregiver
…don’t let him lose his
willingness to stick with me,
to make love and to make
love work…
—Tim Dlugos
Please don’t let his endurance break
on the stone-hard core of my failing.
Let him soldier on remembering
things damn hard to remember now
in the contumacious blossoming
of my death. Don’t let him forget
the road to here has been too long
to end with this possibility of regret.
Please let him see beyond my skin
of hematomas, wrinkles and stains
to the underlying freshness he once
stroked and rubbed, wet with kisses,
felt warm and smooth against him,
warm and smooth as he felt it soft
though firm over young muscle
in an orgasmic Apocalypse of love.
With his soul of a golden retriever,
let him find playfulness each hour
that recedes from us ebbing out with
life’s retreating, null tide. Let him
still fetch and stay for me, loyally
joyful, curling up by my scant side.
Let him find in my smile at his antics
a golden retriever’s peace of mind.
Let him know after all these years
he remains my lover, though past
youth and strength and savoir faire
have evanesced, disappearing
into age’s deepening forest duff
dissolving to provide sustenance
for our souls. Lovers ever, we, never
relinquishing desire, never thinking
for a moment we’ve had enough.
In the fandango of being newly one,
we never saw coming all following
new-spring kissing, summer rising,
our flesh heralding nothing untoward,
our youth a perfect mask disguising
turns in our road, valleys beyond
our hills, and we danced our dance
never seeing age’s approaching ills.
Please don’t let him leave. Please
keep him by me until I separate
from time and space, done with flesh,
nature adamantly splitting asunder
fresh spirits earlier united earnestly
in their desire, innocence, and wonder.
I’ll be gone in what’ll seem to him
only brief misery once I’ve moved on.
Pills, catheters, oxygen and bedpans,
sickroom odors and claustrophobia,
ugly cleanups and ruining spills,
soiled everything lying everywhere,
forgetting in the middle of complaining
how I’m a human being in disrepair:
this will pass and fade for him after
anguish and I no longer need his care.
Until then, though, let him linger long
and be a solace as only love may solace
the to-and-fro of life’s stressed tossings.
Let him be here with me until one night
there’s no morning. Let him know
he may go then to where he will, love
that was hard now proven, love proven
master of life when comes good or ill.
Rob Jacques is the author of War Poet Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Prairie Schooner, Amsterdam Quarterly, Poet Lore, The Healing Muse, and Assaracus. He lives on a rural island in Washington State’s Puget Sound.