Heart Shift
We’ve got to stop meeting like this
Paul quips the third time he’s kicked out of heaven
wakes up to see paddles in my hands. Idiopath
his doctor writes on his chart
doesn’t know why Paul’s heart keeps quitting
disease without recognizable cause
origin unknown
but just walking into his room
I know the way a composer
looks at a sheet of music and hears a dirge.
Too much pain he whispers
his body a camera set at the widest aperture
sensitive to the tiniest light
his mouth a white line in a long lived-in face
ten miles down a bumpy mountain road.
Nothing you say can shock me, ever the jester
Paul is on mortal notice unless another heart
can be found. I’ve had every test
except autopsy…that’s where I draw the line.
Sunlight will take longer to circle his body
as it lingers over his face in the mirror.
Blood will fade to thin ink
writing his signature on the dotted line
leaving his children fixed for life without him.
Each breath an act of rebellion
Paul relearns every day
how to live in his wrists
the arch of his foot
the third intercostals space
in his jaw bone and eye sockets
how to retrieve voice and hope
from defibrillator paddles and call lights
the shiver of leaves.
(from Minnesota Review: A Journal of Committed Writing, 2003)
