The Return

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My father has died.

I got on the road early this morning.

No destination.

The way my life will be from now on.

I stop along the way for breakfast.

Bacon and eggs, toast, scalding hot coffee.

I sit by the window.

A sharp sun warms my right cheek.

A quick glance at the paper.

A bloody image of a car wreck.

Death is sold anonymously in America.

I watch the waitress moving

among the tables.

Busy with her rounds.

The nape of her neck is sweaty.

The radio is playing this country song,

the story of a cowboy

unhappy in love.

The waitress has a red flower tattooed

on her right shoulder.

She turns and gives me a sad smile.

I leave the tip on the newspaper

next to the cup of cold coffee.

Walking toward the car I try to imagine

the loneliness of a man facing death

in a hospital bed in a foreign country.

“Death expires in a white pool of silence,”

wrote the young Martinican poet Aimé Césaire

in 1939.

What can anyone know of exile and death