ISSUES | A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH LASummer2017 | Page 15

Grandfather
Ah-Kong slept at seven last night, slept two
more hours this afternoon.
He'd been tasked to drive me to the airport,
when the silver hands of his watch slanted towards
the time he reviewed the contents of his day in bed:
his garden, the orchard, the nightly news, and his sister's
home-cooked Chinese dinners.
Clad in Sunday shoes and long-sleeved shirt
tucked into dark, pressed pants
he barked laconically at me before I stepped into the car,
made me repeat my careful checklist twice first,
his granite-flecked jaw
weighted down as though with rocks.
Large, gnarled, knotted hands gripped the steering wheel
so hard
it should have been a shovel or crate -- the way
wizened talons lock too hard over smooth branches.
He stood unmoving in the check-in line, keeping my suitcase
in the shadows his ramrod, old frame
carved on the floor.
He took his black coffee without sugar or cream,
gulped it down his weathered brown throat,
eyed my iced cappucino under sparse grey brows.
He said little -- just tracked
blurry red orange lights twinkling through the cold windowpanes.
He told me to take care, eat well --