A Shoe Beside The Bed (A Dirge) Poem by R. H. Peat

A Shoe Beside The Bed

All night long
with a film on the sills
a crusted fume calmly lurked
in the dust-gusted shadows
as I walked the curtained halls.

Checkerboard tiled streets
shuffled slippers into faded light,
whispers hid in darkness,
gray shaded dampers,
hung in open doorways.
Sleeping pain wrapped in
narcotic numbness turns
beneath tucked bed sheets.

Looking behind the doors,
searching forgotten corners,
I could not find his grim smile;
or his breath etched towel
dipped into the liquid black
where the inky illness moans
between chrome bed rails.

Not until a stainless steel screech
when punctured dawn peeped in
did he take and caress youth's
hand, and left the easy old behind
for another day. Only then —
did he take off the clipped clamp
on his cold clouded onyx cloth
and pulled it gently over
the young man's head.
Quickly leaving in greedy haste -
the old man's whiskers
above his cozy cotton quilt

I looked and looked again,
but I didn't see him come.

I only heard him go
on the narrowest tiptoe,
a tenuous sigh upon
a loved-ones lips

Notes:
© RH Peat 5/3/2019
Form: Personification 6 strophes,38 lines
Published; : in Poetic Bond IX: — 2019
Willowdown Books IX 2019 Pg.22