Scott LaMascus was privileged to serve on his father’s caregiving team during his battle against ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). He is the author of The Edited Tongue: A Family’s Year with ALS. He is a writer and public humanities advocate in Oklahoma City, USA. He is director of the McBride Center for Public Humanities at Oklahoma Christian University. We are proud to feature a selection of Scott’s poetry in support of ALS awareness month

Poetry by Scott LaMascus, writer, advocate and rare caregiver

The seventh age of Shakespeare’s father

—Day 3

My father began telling his stories about me as a child 

at eighty-six years old, his manly voice now gone,

typing pithy lines from a crisp mind—my prayer at five, 

a poem at ten. I hadn’t known he was listening

and today, he leaves nothing unsaid, I remind him.

We play these roles every day, pass notes back

and forth at the speechless, crackling fire, write

little songs onto his marker board—notes on the herd,

tractor, details on his business and deeds, his wife, 

grandkids born and unborn, lines said and unsaid.

I lift him from bed to chair, push him from bedroom

to where I think he wants to go, clean his glasses

and study his eyes, the only window left open to me

to gaze onto stages where he’s playing the deathbed.   

This is for everything you put me through, he might say. 

I could say the same now, but we play out this final scene, 

sans grand statements of a Lear, no panic of Polonius,

no oblivion in our script of tender and quotidian love.

The Edited Tongue: A Family’s Year with ALS, Scott LaMascus

Los Angeles: Bottlecap Press, 2025. ISBN 9781962390842 

Available to buy: https://bottlecap.press/products/edited

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