Nurse Pretti

For Alex Pretti

Because his last words were for a woman; 

because he asked,

are you okay, are you okay; 

because he had learned to say it 

by standing each night beside the dying; 

because sometimes he held their hands; 

because he had lived only as long 

as the scent of childhood in an album; 

because he was a son; 

because he sang once; 

because of all of it, 

because of all of it, 

because of all of it, 

tell it, tell the story: 

a breath has left;

a country is dying; 

and a man laid his face

on its pavement today

as though he were listening to a patient's heart-

even then, even at the ending-

to do what he was there to do: heal.

-Joseph Fasano