I’m lying here reading story after story
about Zen masters precisely foretelling
the date and time of their own demise
when I remember my grandfather
who must have told us half
a hundred times that he’d be dead
by the end of the year then went on
living another two decades,
until his speech slowed and he
no longer cursed the length of skirts
on television or blamed his arthritis
on the Japanese, actually stopped
threatening to cut off his own legs
when rain rattled the eaves,
and mostly just wandered around
the house finally unattached
to the bottles of cheap beer
that had for so long sustained him
though he still stopped sometimes
to ask for a dish of ice cream.
