is like being burned up
in a twelfth-floor elevator.
Or drowned in a flipped SUV.

It’s like waking with scalpels 
arrayed on my chest.
Like being banished to 1983.

Having a fight with you 
is never, ever less horrid: that whisper 
that says you never loved me—

my heart a stalled engine
out the little square window.
Your eyes a white-capped black sea.

There are wires and cords
that stretch out, 
hang dangling
from the hospital bed,
the transparent filigree 
of a floating jellyfish.
One leads to the phone
to order food. 
One leads to the TV, so we can stare at
cooking shows with delicacies not available here.
One leads to compression wraps
for your vulnerable legs.
Another leads to the IV ports 
in your bruised, crepe-skinned arm.

In between your long spells of sleeping
and my knitting, 
we enjoy the pretend competition
of the contestants cooking.
We marvel at how quickly 
they move about the kitchen.
I marvel even more at your careful movements
and the miracle of progress after your fall.
We count the steps you take
as if you are skipping stones—
any number makes you a winner. 
You fight for everyday markers of strength,
your efforts a perfect ten.
This is the Olympics of rehabilitation.

Cotton gown diamond patterns 
become your fashion.
We look out the window as day becomes night.
Another day passes 
in the goldfish bowl of recovery,
a blue ribbon day of taking five steps 
just to turn around
and walk back to the bed.

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
                                                                                                              I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
                               it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

                 Why I love thee?
     Ask why the seawind wanders,
Why the shore is aflush with the tide,
Why the moon through heaven meanders;
Like seafaring ships that ride
On a sullen, motionless deep;
      Why the seabirds are fluttering the strand
       Where the waves sing themselves to sleep
         And starshine lives in the curves of the sand!

Love comes quietly,
finally, drops
about me, on me,
in the old ways.

What did I know
thinking myself
able to go
alone all the way.

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
                                                                                                              I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
                               it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

Not an act, I’m told, more a leave to live 
where words have no leverage—I’ve a pile 
of words. It was useful to hear actors 
talk shop about how one doesn’t just act 

but live the role—a trick into feeling 
what doesn’t need said. I watch a cast now 
from this seat next to no one asking me
what was said like these two do, one row up. 

Once home, they’ll unwrap each other’s bow-tied 
necks; mouths agape, marvel over their spoils
as if for the first time. Look at the way
one lowers the other’s mask, levies a kiss, 

then worries back its curl over the usher
-hushed laugh, each needling the other to live.