Your bone marrow is slowly
going.
They joke about your dying.
Pretty soon they’ll consider
telling you face to face
what they’re hiding.
But for now you're given
their embarrassment and some space.
It will happen without consent or your really knowing.
First, perhaps, a shoulder will not crack nor
a bruise from that ineptly teaspoon-
tapped
lip
crack open.
Then one hand then
the other will feel full
finger-full, each with blood
enough for the dextrous unscrewing
of baby, (and old man), -proof pill bottle tops.
But you’ll not have reached for them for oh quite
some hours: hours which will have been filled with
laughter, flowers, and seeping warmth from uninterrupted memories of
private
things you’d not given yourself
permission for
in donkey's
years.
Some sort of psychic syrup
is what you think you hear.
Hills you muster and
veils unfurl as flags,
maybe cheers
into clear valleys,
no drill, with every intimate contour
released as if a film uncensored backwards
from X through Parental Guidance to Universal minds you:
so near, your belovéd appears, you taste the wonder of her tears
legs, yes yours, are wading river crossings;
see! there! stepping stones fly at eye
level. "Stars?" you suppose
for a moment but
you’re brought
back by heat
and tulips
you’d
liked
to
have
bought
from your
son’s tales of
an Amsterdam market
scent your skin, a slim young man’s perfect
covering on shins, runneling a goal your chair lifts
takes you to where you didn’t even think you’d dare
bed it was and blankets against the mildew’s creeping
luscious leeward sinking now and gently the skim of crystal
butterflies caresses your every wrinkle and each and every pore a -
halo within voices you swim some final beginning possessed
you are by
still
