Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006 Book

MESSENGER

1.

First I smelled it, hovering near the bed:
distinctly saline, as in a ship's wake;
a bit of dust and mold, like moth-found fur;
also something grassy, crushed herb, sharper.
After that, when they turned the ward lights out,
the space ship glowing at the nurses' hub,
his pod stilled and darkened, only the small
digitals updating on the screen,
then I could see'one "sees" in deep gloaming,
though ground-fog makes an airless, formless room'
how fully it loomed behind and larger than
the steel stalk, the sweet translucent fruit.
One doesn't notice wings when they're at rest.
One doesn't notice the scythe of the beak at rest:
opaque, like horn, or bone, knobbed at the base
but tapering, proportionate to the head.
In Quattrocento paintings, Mary's face
is mirrored by the messenger's radiant face:
that's meant to comfort'see, they're just like us.
No, they're not like us. This had no face,
and its posture was a suspect courtesy,
stolen from a courtier who nods
to the aging king, head bowed, and holds aside,
lowered, but unsheathed, the sword.

2.

Except in wired emergencies, the signals
sounding for a pressure drop but not
a fever spike, a bad white count, blood
transfused too fast, a tube dislodged, sudden
struggle to breathe, the opiates late again,
always late'it was my task to harry
the Duty-Nurse, Charge-Nurse, Intern, Attending,
to put in the rut of their path implacable me'
the workers came and went without alarm
and thus I could not trust them'
they must think it
part of the common furniture that clutters
cardio-thoracic post-surgical wards,
but I think not: I think your father's code
was branded somewhere on its bony leg,
631688, the same sign
stamped on the band clamped to the swollen wrist,
markers for an arduous migration.
I think it was used to hunger. I think it was waiting
for me to leave the room.