View from Outside
He didn’t want the EKG. He didn’t want To know. But the nurse attached Its greasy patches to his chest to read. From which all things spray violent And out, there is a point of singularity. In Michelangelo’s sculpture of the heart, For instance, the heart wears the costume Of David’s body. In the eyes of the Judean There is no fear of what the heart has made. You are going into cardiac arrest, this nurse said. That’s when he saw the thing the other way: Something mute sat like a stone Inside the clenching and unclenching of his heart. He had the stone. Only it would pay attention.
Credit
From The Clearing by David Keplinger. Copyright © by David Keplinger. Reprinted with the permission of New Issues Poetry & Prose, Kalamazoo, Michigan. All rights reserved.
Date Published
01/01/2005