HATCHING

You	broke my heart
Open
You	spilled out when
My	heart’s water broke
I	was surprised
You	to find in there
	holed up in the
Last
Place	I would have looked for
You	and
You	were the
Last	thing I would have expected to find, in the one
Place	I thought
You	never came
I	thought was closed to
You

##

jp

May 20, 2005

HER GOLDEN FALL

HER GOLDEN FALL

As gold as the maple leaves and school buses

Her thin golden hand

Lay beneath mine.

My hand so rosy, so pink, lavender with veins,

Her veins so olive green beneath the ochre skin.

I laid my hand on hers ---

So warm, it surprised me.

She breathed.

I breathed, and laid my hand on hers.

I didn’t know what else to do.

What to say to a sleeping maiden,

Gilded from within by jaundice, thin with cancer?

Thin except for her large livered midriff.

My eyes traced the bones of her face,

which I hadn’t seen before.

I could draw her, maybe some day.

Life sped through her green veins,

Oblivious to the sorceror’s apprentice of death

Busy at work in her liver.

I sat and composed this poem,

Chided myself.

Was I here to give comfort,

Or collect material for a poem?

And later, after I left, I was glad

That I had to go the bathroom.

It made it okay to want to wash my hands.

##

In memory of Yvonne, d. Nov. 11, 2006

HAPPY FEET

I was so glad to see your feet

Poking out of the end of the bed

Past the curtain—

I would know them anywhere.

They looked alive.

At least not white or yellow,

With a toe tag.

You wouldn’t be in that hospital bed

If you weren’t alive,

I immediately know.

The two hours of following the chopper on the ferry,

To the wrong hospital, trying to find you,

wondering if you died on the way

And they skipped the hospital

And took you straight to the morgue,

Those two hours were over

At the sight of your feet.

##