SISTERS
Shouldn’t of gone to bed last night.
Elvena was hurting
in her chest and stomach.
I gave her one of my nitro tablets.

Wrapped in my blankets, I didn’t hear
her. Don’t know what woke me early.
Must have missed hearing her shift in bed.
Found her just as she was,
tried to find her pulse but she was cold.
Should’ve stayed up.

Called EMS. Wasn’t long before I heard
sirens, lights knifing through the curtains.
In the doorway, I leaned on my walker
as the medics tried to revive her.
Should’ve stayed up.

Don’t know what plans
are being made for me now.
Shouldn’t of gone to bed last night.

Shouldn’t of gone to bed last night.

Margie Review

BIOPSY
As we drive the back road
to the hospital, redbuds swell
to blossom. On this day
of your surgery, flowers
stage themselves against
the gray-rain sky.

Tree-eating mowers shred
the greening branches
as the surgeon will slice
cells from your breast.

Flower by flower,
magenta falls from slashed limbs,
covering the road’s shoulder.
Section by section,
cells cover the slides,
the pathologist will render
a judgement.

On the wounded boughs,
the remaining leaves
begin to mend
the damage
of steel.

Iris

GO TO SLEEP
Her husband offers
her favorite,
a soft boiled egg,
but she pushes
the spoon away,
chokes
on a sip of coffee.

I can’t imagine
how it is to watch
your wife die.

I’ve been here three
times before; to teach
her to get out of bed, to make
her muscles stronger.

What do you want?
She’s 93.
I can’t work miracles.

I watch him move
her from the bed
to the wheelchair.
I have no more
to show him.

He talks about
feeding tubes
or letting nature
take its course.
He still doesn’t
know what to do.

On good days,
she spends afternoons
on the deck, pushes
herself around

PICTURES
Morning sun, creeping
up behind charcoal hills,
brushed clouds thunderstorm gray,
sunrise pink and yellow, painting
the day’s first tapestry as I drove
to work at the hospital.

The mother watches the waiting
room clock crawl toward visiting
hours. The baby, hands twitching,
sleeps in the stroller.

I help the father, his face unshaven
and hospital pale, shuffle
from the intensive care unit
toward the drowsy child.
With shaking hand, he brushes
the silk-soft hair and whispers,
“How are you, Will? Haven’t seen you
in two weeks. You’ve grown”

He touches the baby
as if he were taking
a butterfly from the net.

Asheville Poetry Review
On the road to see Mrs. Dye,

I pass bleached buildings
in different stages of collapse.
Overnight, like fallen chimney
bricks,
her vertebrae crack.
In a chair, pushed to the side
of the nursing home hall,
her jaw hangs
like a door
on an eroded hinge.
Signs posted warn a structure
is unsafe, the windows

dilated
as her stare from the railed bed.
Layers of her history are lost

in the weathered paint. Her thoughts, remains
of a starling’s nest in a burned-out light,
blow across a ragged yard.

Iris

LISTENING TO A PATIENT WITH ALS
It started in my left foot,
it’s the worst one right now.
I don’t want to get stiff,
don’t want a feeding tube,
I want to eat like I always do.
I’ve researched this disease–
it’s stealing my body.

What about your other patients–
the young woman–
does she have children?
And the one
who can’t hold her head up.

You know, you can’t see the wind,
a word or love. I wonder
if you become energy.
I want to have control at the end.
I think the light people see
is just the brain shutting down.

One week I can get in the tub,
the next, I have to figure a new way.

Hospital Drive

SWALLOWTAILS
Yellow against green
catches my eye
as the tiger swallowtail

walks from under its leaf
to wait for the sun
or buddlea’s nectar to rise.

Its flight seems aimless,
vulnerable to the wind,
before landing on purple

coneflower. I rarely see it fight
to protect its petalled stalk.
Not like the ruby throat
that takes on a sphinx moth

daring to visit a bee balm blossom.
Spicebush and pipevine visit on occasion.
Zebras float past but never land.

Summer lingers, tails get ragged,
blue spots less brilliant.
I dead head the bush

all season to keep the colors coming.
One night, the frost is heavy,
leaves curl up,

but I never see a butterfly
with wings rimed with ice.

The Hudson View

MAN ON A BENCH
Spring, warm nights,
moths under street lights.
His sleeping bag a mattress,
he stretched out like a praying mantis:
arms bent, face in a frozen grimace.

He sleeps while the early morning
traffic passes, his gray hair
peeks over the bench arm.
In the afternoon, he crosses the street,
clasping his belongings.

Where does he go
when summer’s thunder
and lightening own the sky?

Autumn, leaves of the Bradford pear
brown and settle onto the bench.
He spends nights in his sleeping bag.
He coughs, his breath
drifts in the morning sun.

Did he sleep in cardboard
under iced-covered pine trees
in the highway’s median
or crouches over a steam vent,
his tent capturing the heat.

Maple trees bud,
the volunteers plant
early pansies. Today, the man
reclaims his bench.

The Hudson View

OMENS
Spring is the best-these dark and pre-dawn walks
I take with my dogs. Squawks, whistles, and toots
announce the chat while the towhee
drinks its tea. Frogs sing, quiet as we pass them,
then pick up again. Some months, the moon surprises me
with my shadow, it is then I look up.

That last morning, there were no signs.
That afternoon, red hay-twine with orange
surveyor tape hung across the road.
Keep Out signs were tacked to the trees.
Next morning, I ducked under the tape. Just
enough light and breeze to see the flags on the shrubs.
And the spiders’ webbed cups collect the dew,
do they drink from the strands.

I didn’t hear the brush axe slice the slender
pine trunk spear-point sharp. Or the bulldozer
tread grinding the gravel that leads to the electric
line easement. Even though I didn’t see it,
I know the operator powered up and lowered
the bucket; the earth lay scraped and raw.
One morning, I startled: something guarded
the road’s entrance. Silly me, the For Sale sign.

The bulldozer is gone now, another For Sale sign
posted at the entrance of the woods. Birds
still sing on territory. Most of the trees still
stand. When they fall, I won’t hear them,
but I know the trunk will crack, the crown begin
to lean then fall with a swoosh and a thump.
Just as they did when the land was cleared for my house.

riverSedge

FRACTURE
The last flake falls
snow crystals become ice.
She walks to the mailbox.
A stumble, twist — avalanche

of soft bone slips, her fall gathers
speed, takes her down.
She crawls up the steps, rests
on the kitchen floor.

Blue sky becomes
hospital-white.
Like the greening of a scarred
hillside, callus formation
fills the nailed gap.

She shoves the walker
forward, the distance
from bed to hall
a bouldered slope.

Twice a day, she maneuvers the walker
around imaginary rocks, climbing stairs
to an imaginary peak.

Now she’s home. Sits to brush
her teeth, spits in that little pan
from the hospital.

And Dad. He can barely walk 10 feet,
sits to fry an egg, wash the dishes.
He hasn’t thought about how Mom
will get in the tub with a casted leg,
wipe after using the toilet.

Hasn’t thought
how they will out run
this avalanche.

riverSedge

EVOLUTION
The squirrel’s brain, small as a walnut.
It must learn to measure the distance
from limb to bird feeder, to steal seed.
After acorns fall, it hides them
under oak leaves, in a bird house.

The crow gathers bright objects,
even quarters, to adorn its nest.
It swarms the sleeping owl,
pecks the hawk until it leaves.
On winter nights, the crow
sleeps in the pines.

Driving 55, I saw it picking
at the squirrel’s crushed body.
Crows wait until the last minute
before flying up. But this one defied
death too long. I closed my eyes, it hit
the side of the car. In the rear view mirror,
I saw its wing in the ditch. Tonight,

the cycle will begin again, the possum
scavenging the crow’s cold body.

Third Wednesday