[after the painting “Preparation for the Funeral” by Cezanne (1869)]
The dying man was open and awake. He watched – his eyes as wide as God – as the doctor dug deeper inside. Not thinking, daydreaming, seeking something none of us could mutter or admit. “It was certainly in there at dinner,” I started to say, but the silence hushed me back inside the shadows, behind the candle’s light, as the doctor dug deeper, a theater of ears, his mother in a rocking chair, watching her only son on this Sunday, becoming something new.