Last Days [from Red Bank]

      We were almost alone
      in the divided hospital room.
      Flowers on the wallpaper reminded us to cheer up.
      We couldn't see the traffic
5     that crossed the cobbles under us. And yet,
      everything was plainly itself and was plain.
      Even the new sky behind the telephone lines was flat blue.
      Monmouth Medical's institutional kitchen always served
      their rippled carrot-coins cold. At one,
10    the scholar-doctor's colossal
      geniality had shocked us,
      whispering his Mid-Western college guesses
      at Schopeanhaur's tantric
      worm of will in the apple of the world.
15    We thought in secret
      that he had grown
      since the last time he left us.
      In the children's ward,
      Spot fetched Jane and Jerry's stick
20    as eternally as ever
      while you were dying.
      "Go, Spot, go!"

 

From the collection "Red Bank"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.