BEA’S
SONG
It
isn’t dawn yet. I’m
reading
the
family Bible, Psalm
71, the one
you
mentioned when you called
from
hospital. I haven’t
asked
your
room number, don’t care
to talk
to
a switchboard, a clerk
under
artificial lights, as
dawn
turns
its bleached border.
Corridors
and walls where you
lie
among
glass and chrome, sheets
of
disposable paper. Your
roommate
clutches
a stuffed teddy-bear
blank
in the eyes but furry.
You
hold the Psalms in your
mouth.
The
doctors will cure you.
It’s
your heart,
the
one that doesn’t show
on
their screens, that
plucks
the
deep strings of fear
and hope
and
gives off song.
END
OF SUMMER
Running
on empty
as
the ridgetop
snakes and
sidehills
we’ll
never reach
the unaffordable
beauty
of a gas-pump,
and
you
tell me
it’s nothing
but
horses
and famished
riders lining
out
for
the hunt,
for a cavalry
dash
past us
toward some
military
crest,
so
many spotless
horses galloping
over
their riders
on a snowy
ground
and
all I keep
saying is
“how
many
have we
lost?”