Stuck
Tonight, the southbound
sings relentlessly. I hear
and I don’t. Not like before.
Before your death, lonesome
was comfort in each whistle
blow, in each reverberation
of a window pane.
Pain becomes the immeasurable.
I am stuck at the stoplight, eyes
fixed on the brown walls that witnessed
your death. These are things I have no
reference for measuring.
Room 370. I’ve walked by it too
many times to count since that last
night in April when you breathed
your last breath, alone, unimpeded.
The light changes to green,
the color of new. My foot responds
and I make the left turn by the CVS.
Within seconds, I marvel at the way
a body keeps moving, long after
the dying, too soon for forgetting.
3 comments:
fine work, maggie. i'm a bit confused -- is the RR crossing near the hospital? there appears to be a strong connection between the room and the mournful whistle that once offered a comforting message of sorts that life was still present -- a sound that you still hear but don't hear at all.
i've always thought that its the individual image, the localized, specific picture, that bring a poem out most vividly -- and here, in rm307, the southbound freight, and the left turn at the CVS, you've done it so well.
it's so good to read your words again. jim
Hi Jim,
So glad you stopped by and not only read me but offered your thoughts. I did the mental leap and left out the info about the RR tracks. Not a good thing for the reader and one I'll go back and work on soon. I was just feeling "stuck" and so I started from there.
There actually is a RR crossing within roughly 1/8 mile (if that far) from the hospital. How insane is that? When our city planners were reviewing plans for a new hospital in 1976 or so, somehow they overlooked that very important fact. So, in an emergency situation, you have to take an alternate route that could make the difference between life and death. As we know, that difference is sometimes merely fractions of a second.
I was stopped at the light looking at the hospital thinking about Dad and thinking about the cars stuck on this side of the tracks. The train blew its whistle and I guess I was so lost in thought that I heard it but didn't and when I remembered hearing it I remember thinking how it just didn't make me feel like it once did--lonesome but filled with a sense of belonging.
Thanks for the vote of confidence in my work, jim. Your opinion means a great deal to me.
Best to you this rainy evening,
M
RR tracks here run right through town, as they do in a lot of places. our hospital too is close to the tracks, which lie about a half mile from the street that parallels the front of the hospital. luckily, the rooms are all pretty soundproofed here, or patients would have that whistle branded on their brains. j
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