OK.
This is a poem that I wrote for my grandfather
that I call "A Real Story."
"Sucking on hard candy to sweeten the taste of old age,
grandpa told us stories about chickens,
city chickens sold for Sabbath soup but rescued at the end
by some chicken-loving providence.
Now at 95, sucked down to nothing himself,
he says he feels a coldness, perhaps the coldness
David felt even with Abishag in his bed
to warm his chicken-thin bones.
But when we say you'll soon get well,
grandpa pulls the sheet over his face,
raising it between us the way he used
to raise the Yiddish paper when we said, enough chickens, tell
us a real story."