My whole body’s a hand up inside the hole of some lacquered clock reaching—

What word or other have you now she’s in her tracks stopped,
what more than slow up for me, hey?  Ta ta
goes the rivulet that runs inside, inside this hospital partition.

You are indoors though her hand is colding. It is the South,
though she’s of northern lights, of rivulets, of yellow flight,
of gases of light at some odd 40,000 degrees, say.

Do’t—pile her yellow dresses at the foot of her bed!
Already her room’s of light beams—
whoosh—whilst her shale grimace (catty-corner mine) stays.

My face, it cannot want to be kind.

A nurse in bouncy shoes verifies, This is no catnap and
What’s worse and As you please and Moreover.
The partition. And curtain. A fluorescent strip casts her.

Like she’s merely ‘gainst a screen thrown, though I
her chin in one hand cup, in the other her tender spine.

For she was old—pant-
on-steps-old one mumbled once (the earpiece
not to her ear) as she always did: Such as it is . . .
Gingerly, gingerly up in arms, into her a tiny blow.