Hypoglycemia: A Love Poem

2.10.10

I graze the day’s first part;
ride drifts of your narration,
traces of my sensation.

So it goes: I jolted you awake
with a terrible surprise show—
contract, relax, repeat—violent and involuntary.
You knew the story and came with sugar packets,
but my swallowing was broken.
You urged my limbs into shirt and shorts
before help could arrive, did arrive.
With it, hormone injection met with cries of perplexion;
words of the EMT: we should take her in just in case;
in the ambulance, you by my side...
So little of this is mine.

But in time things took shape.
This much: waking to clanging,
strange braid of shouts and
murmurs, sharp lick of antiseptic.
And right there, You,
your eyes small with caring;
my heart, my love: acute.

--me

Time Enough

The tally of years
added up so rapidly
it appeared I had
been short-changed,
tricked by sleight
of hand, fallen victim
to false bookkeeping.

Yet when I checked
my records, each
and every year had
been accounted for,
down to the last day,
and could be audited
against old diary entries
(client briefings,
dental check-ups,
parent-teacher meetings,
wedding anniversaries),
card statements
(multi-trip insurance,
antibiotics, concert
bookings, SIM cards).

And, although
nagging doubts
remained--an
inkling that I had
been ripped off
in some way,
given short shrift,
made to live at an
accelerated pace,
rushed through
my routines with
unseemly haste--
nothing could be proved,
no hard and fast
statistics adduced.

I had, it seems,
unknown to me,
been living my
life to the full.

--Dennis O'Driscoll

Unable to Find

the right way to get out of bed,
we watch the shades cut dawn
into thin slices, waver a while,
shoulder to shoulder, then join, lazy.

Let's leave this room now: it's given us
all it can, let's go—it's Sunday—have
breakfast out, find a table for two: two eggs,
two toast, two coffees—black. No, nothing

plain: latté. We'll read the paper,
the story of a man who rescued the only thing
he wanted from the rubble of his collapsed shack:
his cat—and be moved by it, and like that;

or play hangman on our paper napkins,
find easy words—no double-meanings: day,
night, rivers... then send the game to its fate,
crumpled on our empty plates.

Let's step inside a church, sit through a wedding,
a christening, a mass for the dead, but leave
before the last amen. We'll take the long way home,
make plans for summer—winter even.

--Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

--Robert Frost

Here City

The sounds
of the train

piped in
through the
PA system.

The whole city
slightly askew

but familiar
in its shadows,

its symmetrical brick,
its dry hot breeze

and its lack
of pedestrians,

save you.

*

The blinking message said:

More alcohol
is needed

to achieve
escape velocity

*

The salutations and styles
erupting on the top
few stairs,

where service
is mercifully restored
and the world resumes

its tangents and vectors,
terrific possibilities
processed by objects

as small and dark
as the eyes of a starling,
constantly soaking up data

and sending it back to Seattle,
which sells it to Tokyo,
which sells it

to someplace else

--Rick Snyder

Travelling

This is the spot:—how mildly does the sun
Shine in between the fading leaves! the air
In the habitual silence of this wood
Is more than silent: and this bed of heath,
Where shall we find so sweet a resting-place?
Come!—let me see thee sink into a dream
Of quiet thoughts,—protracted till thine eye
Be calm as water when the winds are gone
And no one can tell whither.—my sweet friend!
We two have had such happy hours together
That my heart melts in me to think of it.

--William Wordsworth

We Dogs of a Thursday Off

The wine of uncharted days,
Their unsteady stance against the working world,

The intense intoxication of nothing to be done,
A day off,

The dance of the big-hearted dog
In us, freed into a sudden green, an immense field:

Off we go, more run than care, more dance—
If a polka could be done not in a room but straight

Ahead, into the beautiful distance, the booming
Sound of the phonograph weakening, but our legs

Getting stronger with their bounding practice:
This day, that feeling, drunkenness

Born of indecision, lack of focus, but everything
Forgiven: Today is a day exposed for what it is,

A workday suddenly turned over on its back,
Hoping to be rubbed.

--Alberto Ríos