|
Dr. Winakur with Dorothy
Sherbet
A few weeks after her discharge
after the legions of modern miracles
met her dauntless infirmity
I finally retreated.
She waits now
in this way station
where I come
no longer in white.
a shadow
staring out the window
the tray of clotted
food nearby
And she is weary
and I ask how she feels
but she does not answer.
The raspberry sherbet is melting
yet it is my only ammunition
a plastic spoon my only weapon
and I bring it to her parched lips
and she eats for me.
I say isn't the sky so blue
today the clouds so white
spring is near I say
all the time feeding her
urging her to take every drop.
But I am not used
to this work and a dollop
drops on her gown
and red spreads across her chest.
I swipe it away with my hand.
I'm sorry I say
I'm so sorry.
A sample of Dr. Winakur's poetry from the Annals of Internal Medicine.
A Paper Anniversary at 52
The following poem appears in
A Paper Anniversary at 52
And now you sleep in the bed left over
from your first marriage, tucked
into the only room of this old farmhouse
that’s warm when the wind comes
from the north.
These walls are paper thin and mice live
within them and bigger things in the attic
where I have yet to go.
There are children of ours somewhere in the world
older than we were at our first unions.
The lake is almost dry from the drought
and the old garden is nothing but weeds
and the rock walls are falling down
and the barn is red from rust more than paint.
And we gave it all up for this:
that bluebirds will find the box you helped me
nail to the fencepost across the field from
the kitchen window;
that the martins will nest in the house atop
the pole you held as I hoisted all the way up;
that the thistles will be fewer next spring
now that we have wrestled so many out of the ground;
that another year like another season
will never be enough
until it is over.
|
