This morning a volcano
turned back into a neck,
simply a neck.
Decades after a tiny
muscle knot had wandered
or was pushed up
under the skull’s tight base,
this morning it emerged,
brimming with thanks.
When you were days from
Dying
In that hospital bed
A woman came to talk to me
I knew that drill
I recognized the soft approach
The plants that curve into the bay window in the parlor
Drop their leaves to the scuffed wooden floor of this old house
When they no longer hold life.
There they dry and crumble
Scattering dust and debris across the soft pine,
Clinging to my
Avalanche dream—heavy breakage of trees, boulders ripped from
their footings. Chunks of ice bouncing past as the swirling white
mass picks up speed. I’m running running running but can’t stay
ahead of it. Lungs burn, tears stream from the effort, the strain.
Glazed in sweat, I
She did not slice the bandage snugged about the numb toe
but tickled an end open to begin the unwinding. She
unwound the gauze slowly as she turned her head
to see where the cloth stuck to itself and how to cut it.
You often speak to my brother from the bottle
of apple-cider vinegar
fermented for years but saved just in case
in the back of his spice cabinet.
You can tell him how to make your banana bread
and your hamburger gravy
till they are
Fortunate to have a heavy coat
and camp pants in the nightlong cold,
we find you face down in a field
rewarming like a lizard
near dead of an overdose—
leaves of grass imprinted
on your body catatonic,
eyes swollen from allergens.
All you
We are here.
At the foot of your bed,
I warm your limp feet in my hands.
A daughter cleans your mouth, a thirsty anemone.
Your only action is its eager suckle
of the sponge. My sister’s
offering is careful, sparse—
your retiring body
40 years ago
the night before Halloween
they let me into the frigid room
where they were keeping you
deeply sedated, your skin blue
and clammy, barely alive after
having trouble bringing you back,
with a wicked incision stitched
from collarbone to near navel
Vit
il
I go.
I loved quilts until I became one.
I first notice the fog, unexpected
on the inside of a windshield,
a question mark
along the run-on sentence of parked cars, and,
with a snap, you are there,
wrapped in a bag in the back
seat with parking patrol on the prowl,
The diagnosis is here
I knew it was coming
But did not think it would arrive this soon
“You’re very young to have it” the doctor said
My bones brittle, already
At age 50
I feel fragile
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