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Looking at him hunkered in the ancient armchair
It's hard to imagine him once out in the desert.
He sits beside a shelf of objects older than the chair:
Rocks, fossils and Indian tools,
Detailing Earth's history and his own long life.
He fits in there, a piece of history.
His connection to the present winds
Around the chair's leg and off into the bedroom
Where the oxygen machine hums constantly.
I can hardly look at that long plastic tube
Bringing him its cool, clean, pure air.
Grandpa always preferred the heat, the dirt,
The dry, dusty desert wind on his face,
Dark and crinkly now, dried out, but still smiling.
Even now, as he sits trapped in the living room.
His blotchy hand reaches for another rock.
"This one here's copper. From the Morenci mine."
He points in the mine's general direction
And smiles. I remember when I was ten
And we passed Morenci on our way to New Mexico.
On that trip ten years ago, at eighty-one, he hiked miles
Every day with our group, up to the mesa,
Spending hours in the desert heat, working,
Uncovering loves lived in the ancient past,
Shard by shard of pottery, tool by tool of stone.
My grandmother sharply reminds him to shut his mouth.
The oxygen goes in through his nose.
He doesn't hear her. He's still somewhere in the desert,
Wandering through the cacti and sagebrush.
He blends with the fossils and stone tools.
I watch as his frail fingers move over his collection.
CARRIE CONNER
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