But it was long after those rains
when he learned that an operation
would be needed, and no explanation
could be sufficient preparation for

a catheter worked into the prostate.
There was more than the obvious pain
wracking him, or the expectation
shaking him to tears before the fact;

there were nothing much compared to
other fears like long-rooted weeds
grown too deeply in for any act
performed by any person to affect

A part of him was lost on the day
I walked in and saw his large frame
shuddering on the bed, and knew that
he was afraid of life as I was then

and his own father had once been,
who had died after refusing to have
an operation, an appendectomy, until
it was too late. And I could only

pretend that it was just another day,
turn away from the work of the rain,
and stand hard against my own life's
oncoming days of deluge and erosion