Deliver me… and my tongue shall sing PSALM 51:14
I.
At first because it was nobody else’s business.
Then because we needed a place where the ordinary
Held sway, unlorded by disease and the cold
Terrible liturgies of the doctors. And finally
Because I could not find a place for her death there
In the auspices of gossip and small talk and jokes,
I cast her absence as boredom with our blather.
When they ask for her now it’s one more jolt.
II.
I sat there, Ash Wednesday, after saying goodbye,
Wondering how to tell our children, trying to shake
My way free of the vision of her bleeding away,
Head strapped in the halo of the aspirator’s brace.
III.
At the bar a forehead with its thumb-smudged cross.
That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
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