Visiting Hours

Visiting Hours

Now, high overhead, tiny figures

begin to rappel down the rare

filaments of imagination, along fibers

of the optic nerve and down

into the hippocampus,

into the landscape of days.

                                    Brian Turner

                                    “From the West” : MY LIFE

                                    AS A FOREIGN COUNTRY

Hospital hallways are veins are sharp upper

cuts left right swing shut with the hush that hush

you know that hush that pad against the boot

against the shock on the chin the shock

of the dead nestled finally in their head

in the cavity left behind dry as any aged tree

rot dry as tongues long without water long

without words.  Walking them is really crawling

them even though two feet and not two knees

hit the maintenance police linoleum a wax

mirror a cloud a mirror a cloud those thousands

of feet/knees and its God on call and that shock

on the lip when the first concussion bomb

detonates and look:  who’s lifted with that initial

wave lifted the way water lifts when what’s plunged

into it remembers it has air the whole way down—

and maybe there’s no bottom at all no bottom

but those currents of atmosphere we never can

consider not being from that depth, not at least

until we’re riding them and pushing them and making

love to them after a long time of not making love

after a long time of simple naught, of those nerves

jazzed hall ways and nights and knights with their sponge

swords swabbing the walls that concussion man

I felt it in my feet I felt that mother fucker all the way

and it’s a pretty thing a real pretty thing like scalp

skin on the charcoal mountain meaning snow meaning

the iv drip’s pulled meaning in the days to come

the hospital  (listen, it’s doable) is row on harrowed row

slow and a stone bench and some thrown

water and you can visit any time day or night rain

or shine and nothing I mean nothing will ever crush you

like this bomb this pin-pull again.