Belleview Hospital Lobby

I saw a dying man today
on a rolling bed,
a gurney, I think is what it’s called.

He lay perfectly still,
his eyes closed without
any motion in the lids,

while we walked past him
to go to lunch.
It occurred to me

that he probably didn’t even
realize he was lying
in the middle of the lobby.

Perhaps he was dreaming
of when he was young and rode
the A train to Harlem to hear jazz,

Or when he met his wife
in Washington Square Park
forty-three years before her cancer.

I look back toward him;
all I see are the soles of his feet
under a white blanket,

and I hope that he
will not be me
in a few decades when

I miss these days of my youth.