This poem is like giving your starving child a bag of popcorn

This is wasted breath,
Old Gerald thinks
as his legs carry him
slowly up the grassy hill
he hasn't seen since thirteen,
when he'd croon Rosemary Clooney
and roll and tumble,
let gravity do its job.
Today there's not a breath
left to sing.
Even his dog is panting.

He's come here to see.
He's come here to laugh.
He's come here to be buried.
He's huffing, halfway up,
legs burning like coals,
cane useless. It's dry and cool.
No fear of mud-sliding
back down, or slipping
and rolling like
Sisyphus's boulder.
Though he could tip back
like a diseased older tree.
Or maybe his legs will just stop,
suspend him forever halfway
up a childhood hill. Modern art,
not like dripping paint
or boxes full of nothing, but
"Gerald", flesh and bone and substance
with frozen legs and a dead dog.
I am a full of nothing.

Look at the grass, Gerald.
It's sloping less and less.
Look! This is called the summit.
We'll call what's behind you
the climb. It's why you're breathing
like a criminal. Do you remember?
Were you a child here?
Where would you like your hole to be?

Gerald falls.
He's lying now, arms drawn out wide
and heavy like urns,
but his fingers sometimes twitch.
His lungs are filling slower now,
but still to bursting.
His ribs are a dam. His eyes
blink and squint
at the villainous sun. He thinks,
with every twitch, every breath,
There's still life in me yet.