The Pasture
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—Borgess Medical Center, Kalamazoo, Michigan

1.
Troubling, the dark clouds passing, gravid with hidden light.
Some melting on the other side of the pasture. Out here,
Where something like water dripping from blue leaves counts as a
     cardiovascular event.

2.
Cut to Diabetes. At the hospital
The humming
In the dialysis room and the bruised yellow skin and the smell.
     Bulbs, swarms of insects
Whose eyes insinuate . . .
Forever’s foreshadowing—an eternity of nights—followed
     by sparks skidding off a tray of needles . . .

A patient once told me, in a sweat, that he was going to drown in
     a flood.
I saw no water.
But it could have been the simple flickering of the fluorescent lights . . .
“And it’s so goddamned hot in this fucking movie,” he said.

3.
Sometimes I put my face in the water. I don’t cup it, demurely,
     and drink
Or wash. I open my eyes in the creek.
I never see much. The water’s too cold. The part of my face dipped
Into the creek freezes.

A ring of white, like paint, frozen marbles for eyes.
Immediately afterwards I’m blind. I can’t see my hands. I can’t see
The water that is running down my arms, but I can feel it.

4.
I push my cart into the room. Diabetes exacerbated by alcoholism.
His fingers are gangrenous. While the machine works on his kidneys
His dessicated hands
Remain hooked in the air, like claws..

by David Dodd Lee, from Abrupt Rural, New Issues Poetry & Prose
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