Measuring The Shadows

The last time my children saw my father, we stood

around his bed. He lay confined, but

flooded with light from the high windows,

Autumn leaves resolving over lakes and mountains.

“Will you raise the painting?” The painting

hung between two windows, opposite his bed. He wanted it

raised six inches, to line up with the tops

of the thinly trimmed windows, a detail

few would notice, but fifty years of architecture

left him indelibly aware. I moved the nail, raised

the painting, and he relaxed, visibly,

into his pillow. Even here,

the thin veil stretched to a fine mesh, his last toehold

to this world became aesthetic,

the spatial relationship between the things

within his line of vision. Nicholas was twelve, and Lucy, seven,

and my father lay restless, not fully aware of us

around his bed. Light from the setting sun,

colliding in geometric shapes with the angles

of the white walls. And then as if conducting, he made

peculiar gestures. Raising his right hand

above his face, he dragged it through the air,

tracing a line with his thumb to a point. Then

he lifted his left hand to bisect the line

at a perpendicular. “He is measuring the shadows,.”

Lucy explained reassuringly, and we all stood silently,

to watch him, for the last time, working.