a poem after mother's heart surgery

My father,

an old man,
sits in a hospital chair beside my mother,

remembering his father 
and mother 
and others
from a world dead and gone.

And one day, 
if all goes well,

my son, 
an old man,
will sit in a chair somewhere
and remember ME,
dead and gone.

And so on
and on.

All of us persisting, 
somehow, 
in the magnetic lay line particles
that I imagine 
gravity pulls forever down - 
past the crust and
into magma.

Each moment of word 
and act 
and thought -

of love and not-love 
mostly now forgot -

sinking down to a molten core,
waiting to break back free...

To crack the core and live once more
as formless energy.

As thoughts,
somehow,
in the minds of old men 
sitting there 
in their chairs
and memories.