Old poems

Starting this blog has made me think about what I would like to say to the generations that may read it as I grow older. What would they like to know about me? About this time? About this life God is revealing to me? About how I feel?

I went through some old files I had on a hard drive from when I was in college. I trashed the computer long ago, but I backed-up the drive and put the files on my laptop. As my mind ponders the questions I asked myself above, I thought I may find something relevant there.

I wrote some poems in college (more like prose poems -- everything I write turns out like fiction eventually, even song lyrics). Most of them are weak, but this one, for me, holds up after 11 years.

Thought you may like it.

Untitled

I sat beside the hospital bed — a sanitized, anonymous white.
My son was very small between the cashew-colored
blanket and that nameless white; against the expanse of the mattress
his 42 pounds looked like a sailboat on a lonely bay.
A nurse was talking to his mother about asthma
asphyxiation, deficient oxygen to the brain.
I simply stroked away the hair from his forehead,
caressed as much of his face
as tubes and electrodes would allow, and whispered,
“You’re the best little boy in the world.”

Pacing the hall outside of his room,
I stepped on a plastic ball, one of those green and blue marbled
numbers that ping-pongs off the walls then shoots to No Man’s Land
behind the refrigerator.
A girl hobbled out of an adjoining room in chase.
Her head was wrapped with gauze,
the same bleached unnamed white as the bedsheets.
Only the top left corner of her face was visible,
from her lower eyelid to her hairline.
Even from such a small portion,
I could see that her skin looked burned,
thin black stripes like barbecued steak.
She looked up at me with a half closed eye.
I knelt, took the ball between my thumb
and forefinger and handed it to her, saying,
“Is this yours?”
“Thanks,” her mouth muffled as she grabbed her ball.
A woman sitting in the room watched the exchange.
I suppose revulsion and pity were apparent on my face,
because she said, “She has leukemia.”
I shivered. “Why the marks?”
“Her skin is too delicate for her treatments,
but she’d be dead by now without it.”
The girl bounced her ball,
then held it up to me.
She smiled behind the mask
and the half closed left eye.

The doctors finished with my son.
He dozed,
the short pained breaths not allowing for any real sleep.
I resumed my duty,
caressing his skin so that he could relax.

How smooth it was.



Aaron had asthma as a baby pretty badly .. this was a slice of that ..

Dale