leaning close, your watery, bloodshot eye <br />attempts to focus, yet fails each time. <br />your breath belies a day spent working, <br />as your sterile, whisky soaked breath <br />chokes my senses. <br />each word, you force upon my ears, <br />expelling the horrors of death, your death, <br />how one day you will not be here, <br />how your own father, my unknown grandfather, <br />declined, passed away. <br />but rather than fatherly advice or comforting words, <br />you seem intent on drawing tears. <br />and when finally, the tears do fall, <br />your befuddled state confuses <br />their meaning and their source.<br /><br />Christopher Withers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fatherly-advice-2/
