November 6, 2008
A wakeup call? It seems that death has found
the portals it will enter by: my lungs,
pathetic oblong ghosts, one paler than
the other on the doctor’s viewing screen.
Looking up “pneumonia,” I learn
it can, like an erratic dog, turn mean
and snap life short for someone under two
or “very old (over 75).”
Meanwhile, our President Obama waits
downstairs to be unwrapped and I, a child
transposed toward Christmas Day in Shillington—
air soft and bright, a touch of snow outside—
pause here, one hand upon the bannister,
and breathe the scent of fresh-cut evergreens.
Oblong Ghosts
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