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in media res
Member
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Posted: Tue May 6th, 2008 02:42 pm |
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REGARDS TO BRIAN
Strapped to chrome railings of a hospital bed,
The grey safety vest clasps your frailness
Like a wrestler
To prevent you from traveling
To where your wandering mind must be.
Your blank blue and quite dry eyes,
Stare...
At which point on the white ceiling?
In these, the wee death-hours,
Son's brown eyes peer back at blue and his gaze strains
And hollers into those waterless wells,
That he might comfort the terror of the lost boy in you that
Lies in darkness at the lonely bottom,
If there is a bottom.
You blink no echo of reply.
I wipe your twisted nose, proudly twice-broken in the ring,
Just as you wiped my child Irish pug.
The Kleenex grabs and catches on your beard stubble.
The clear of liquid oxygen
Gurgles from the wall above.
In the hall, white shoes of white angel-nurses
quietly pitter by
in rubber soles
Reverent as cathedral mice.
Your carpenter rough hand,
Now with the unmanly grip of a seminarian
Rests across mine like a sleeping bird,
Like the baby spring robins we found in the backyard,
Nest overturned, when you were in the force of manhood
And I was your "little Rusty."
I squeeze to signal I am there if you are there.
Are you there?
Are you, you?
Weary sleep finally seduces and lays my head to the vinyl chairback
Only for a moment.
A dry whisper - or was it a faerie’s wisp? - awakens me.
Was a moment really that long? Or was that you flying by?
Was that your familiar lyrical departing trill of "too-de-loo" I heard?
Father am I now to grandfatherless children.
Outside,
October’s pre-dawn twilight
Inhales deeply,
Preparing
To blow away
The stars.
All comments welcome.
in media resLast edited on Sat May 24th, 2008 03:46 pm by in media res
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lostsocks
Member
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Posted: Sun May 11th, 2008 09:04 am |
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To prevent you from traveling
To where your wandering mind must be.
I really liked that line,
I loved the rest too, but the line especially.
It really captured the feel of the moment for me
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timmy
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| Joined: | Fri Jun 9th, 2006 |
| Location: | Oz, Minnesota USA |
| Posts: | 323 |
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Posted: Thu May 15th, 2008 02:40 am |
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compassion w/o sounding sappy or like a call for sympathy is hard to capture in a poem...I think you have done that here. The picture of Brian before and Brian after is delicate and true.
Things I like: "hands of a carpenter" to "hands of a seminarian" This is a nice picture...oddly religious but the imaging is clear. Not sure you intended this or not but it works for me. The nurses as "cathedral mice" is a great image and only adds lightly to the religious theme here. None of it is overwhelming.
The continual bouncing back and forth of childlike images to present adult Brian images, even the birds (adult birds to chick birds images). Even phrases like "wee-death hours" adds to the child imagery. I like that.
The ending of the poem is fantastic. Just fantastic. I wish I had written it about my mother. I read this poem and I can see her again in her own hospital bed.
Things I don't like:
too many questions. They get in my way (and yet a situation like Brian's obviously cries for answers so maybe that was intentional also?)
Sometimes I think you go one line too far (e.g. last line of stanza 1 / last line of stanza 3 (which is itself a question but you don't use a question mark here? /
I get the feeling this situation was awhile ago for you and yet the poem seizes on immediacy. I am there watching you watching Brian. The sign of good writer.
timmy
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in media res
Member
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Posted: Sat May 17th, 2008 02:57 pm |
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Thank you, lostsocks and timmy.
timmy wrote "compassion w/o sounding sappy or like a call for sympathy is hard to capture in a poem."
Whew! Thank god. I feel as if I dodged that bullet. Thanks!
best,
in media res
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