When told to quit smoking
or to slow down his drinking,
he’d smirk and slur, Ah nuts,
everyone’s gotta die of something.

He expected to go like his father,
a grim-reaper-jackpot winner,
who after finishing his lunch
stood to take his dirty dish
to the kitchen sink, halfway
to the tap an artery in his brain
burst, he was dead by the time
the chicken bones hit the floor.

My father drew no such fortune.
First came the brushes with cancer
then the minor strokes that rolled
through his skull until in the end
his semi-conscious and incontinent
husk was stashed in a nursing home
where we were called to gather
bedside to listen to his lungs
rattle and his heart slowly wind
down like the watch that once
broke on his father’s kitchen floor.