What will come

What will come

—for Misha

From my perch
at the nurses’ station
I see them on rounds—
the bright ones

as they trot like puppies
behind the attending
sprint stairs
rehearse cranial nerves
believe they are special
—some are, some not—

They’ve yet to sum tolls
the years
the molds
how they will replace themselves
misplace themselves

I’ve had to tell one
my son
medicine is a business
you can’t spend so much time listening
to stories

while two boys
who scramble like kittens
miss you at bedtime
will need tuition before you blink
and you

my creative one
haven’t written a poem
in decades.

4/27/12

Shower

Jojoba, citrus and lavender
waft me awake
to receive another day.

These extravagant liters and ohms
should elicit guilt but don’t. I don’t judge
your excesses.

The fact that I haven’t had
a sexual encounter in years
doesn’t mean much. These twenty
strangers who walk in and out
of my exam room each day

with their bundled needs,
and foolish trust, expecting my touch

have taught me
to lavish in this lone pleasure.

4/26/12

Bird’s Nest 

One day,
I discovered this small knot

beneath my collarbone—
a gritty slippery knob, a bird’s nest,

twisted through strata of tissue
girdling bone, surrounded by vessels—

arterioles, capillaries, lymphatics.
She rolled it under cold fingers

over and over, kneading
searching, murmuring a professional hmm,

asking, isn’t it just like this lump
here? guiding my hand with hers

crossing the sacred sagittal line
to finger another node, smaller, but similar

in texture, and what law does it violate,
allowing a reassurance

that cancer does not cross its trope.
I thought: hurricane 

knowing I will die of something someday.
In a hurricane, you inch towards center

where you reach through terror
grasp nothing but this empty cup.

 

 

 

4/25/12

Mercury

So messy, so embarrassing,
so unforgiving of necessary distance.

The only remedy is refusal to speak,
spiraling inward—
a movement that could freeze
into a pose of catatonia,
a breath-hold forever.

This existential wish
to never more shed public tears
is suspect. Shouldn’t the globule drizzling down
the cheek be prized? Doesn’t it resemble mercury—an element
that expands vastly with small integers
of temperature? Hot planet, swift messenger
of pain or heat.

April 24, 2012

Scat

Mom said scat
to the cat hunched at the screen
door, seeking scraps or warmth.

Maybe she said scram.

These musings on my morning walk,
side-stepping, trying to guess
what sort of creature had left
its droppings on the footpath
—seedy, wilder than a dog’s—
marveling at how words
merge memories, my childhood
still longing to let
the cat in.

4/23/12

Going First

—with a nod to Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall

He’d meant to outlive her, but didn’t; had vowed,
(if only to himself) to see her through.

We have little say over these things really,
he realized late, as his heart crumpled
on the blue screen, his topography of sharp
mountains converting to flat plains.

On the first anniversary of his death,
a broodish day in June, her breast erupted—
a volcanic calcified corpus
mixed with pus and blood.

She had misprized the cost
of losing her breast, what’s more,
her dignity, and, for what it’s worth,
the moments left to be used as she pleased.

She was glad to see him go first,
hold his cold fingers as he went,
content to spare him the messier death.

Life costs too much, she thought, as hers ended.
A quarter for each x-ray, fifty cents per pill,
the bargains brokered by hope,
the cut enormous, yes, it costs, dear.

Time is an ink spot running in many directions
at once, with nothing to guide us home, no choice moment.
After so many broken promises, we each die
our own death.

4/22/12

Here where nothing is familiar

She slithers through a black reservoir
to land in gravity. No longer floating in muffled timbre,
clamorous insults pound and harass.
Startled by her own shrieks, she lures sleep.

Wakes, gazes, smacks
into the eyes
of a wild universe.

Days are chores—assembling colors and shapes,
tasting space. The feeling of being held,
the feeling of being let down
into the container. Adding bars to the inventory
of presence and absence.

Air is cold and dry. How to learn not to forget to breathe,
the boundaries of substance. For loss,
she creates longing, for contact, her own thumb.
Skin is next best to bathing in nectar.
She broods. How is everything
to be created from nothing?