Home Visit
You passed the limits
of my knowledge with your
most recent diagnosis, pills and prods
now the specialist’s domain. I hold
your hand and listen. My stethoscope
curls in my pocket, dormant
as a sleeping cat.
Enough
Her idea of a date is splitting
a six-pack with her husband
Friday nights while milking the cows,
still weary from her day job.
Swollen udders demand attention
twice daily regardless
of her daughter’s ball games,
her mother’s terminal cancer.