Eldercare

Your parents are going away,
diminished ghosts drifting off.
Whatever shall you do?

They are feeble, spiteful clouds
now, raining perpetually on everything.
You dry and fold their clothes

and fret to yourself about how
you will ever empty the house
while they thunder, cast bolts, start fires.

In other words, you keep living as you always have,
doing all the hard work you think is necessary
to hold them, like smoke, in your hands.

Nothing has changed. Look down at those palms,
those naked palms. All that’s there is a scent
you can’t follow to learn where they are going.