Biopsy

While sedated on gurney
I forget to breathe.
Nurse (tiny woman) shouts,
“Breathe, dammit!”
so I do. I pay attention to women.
Another nurse (burly, male)
apologizes for shaving my chest hair.
I understand men.
A voice from somewhere asks me to choose
music for the room—Beethoven or Mozart?
I say, “Bluegrass.”
Voice asks, “Huh?”
Dosed with fentanyl, mind detached,
I follow my body into an extraction factory—
fingers, scalpels, giant needles,
a sharp and delicate ballet
to bluegrass ballads of betrayal,
knife murder, songs of mortality
making the surgeon wince.

Lab results next week
to learn if I’ ll soon be dead.
Woozy in wheelchair to curbside to home,
with my love to sleep all afternoon,
then evening watch a rom com because
we prefer happy endings. Don’t you?

Touch of mother, of father

You can see the bulge
next to my navel
like a blob of butter atop a stack
of hairy pancakes,
a small hole in the midriff muscle wall
where fat is oozing from within,
an umbilical hernia
next to the lingering intimate touch
of my mother where she buttoned my belly,
where she’ll never let go
though long dead.

Next week a surgeon’s knife and needle
will plug the leak
before my colon like a string of sausage
can follow the fat to freedom.

I explain to my son
that my father had this same hernia,
same surgery and so just a warning—
you too, son, may need it someday.

His son, my grandson, watches,
listens with boyhood ears,
says he’ll skip breakfast.
We do not tell him
meals are served family-style,
no menu, no choice.

Emma In Assisted Living

Crutches? Smutches!
Out the unguarded side door
nothing will stop angry Emma
from her daily trundle while sparrows
are freezing, tumbling from trees, but Emma
with fibrillating heart can balance on old snow
until—oh shit—above the playground,
icy concrete stairs.

Leg in cast, summoning dignity,
Emma seats herself on ice, top step.
One mitten holds crutches overhead,
other eases her sliding descent,
bump on her bum. Oof.

Oof, oof, and a beagle discovers Emma
the perfect height for a lick.

Oof and oof and a toothy girl
in scarlet snowsuit, legs kicking,
arms waving above her head
bump bump bumps to the bottom,
beagle barking.

Standing at the landing just a moment,
all eyes meet. Emma dizzy almost faints,
almost grins.

Dry leaves in a shifting breeze, girl
and dog scatter. The staff is searching
while Emma alone, entirely found, heart
fluttering as a bird between warming hands,
resumes her amble in late winter,
toward spring.

Joe Cottonwood has repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest books of poetry are Foggy Dog and Random Saints. He appreciates wagging tails and dog-eared pages. His website is joecottonwood.com http://joecottonwood.com/.