Hospital Room
A box with four thin beds, each bearing its quota
of confusion and a limp penis;
babbling cheerful as a field of weeds
in flower, hurt if you don’t grin with it.
Plus the messier aspects of age –
positioned neat stains on the sheets,
each meal a slurp, and the sanity
which sometimes troubles these men like a buzzing fly
briefly. Their rucked gowns might be bulky
jackets, worn with the fur inside
to keep them warm against the climb to a glacier
five thousand years ago. Their wry white hair as caps,
their spoons flint blades. That other man’s long dead
bit in this cool and sterile glitter each of these,
resourceful and tough like him, now makes that climb,
the catheter swinging like plaited sinews and the precious
medicine kit shrunk to a crusty fungus,
a brown patch flaking from a years-dried wrist.
Page(s) 33
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