A Nurse Dies in a Far Away Land
The leather tethers kept loosening.
I had to pull at them until
they dug into your body
binding you to a rocking cross.
It was all for nothing
you died snapping at unseen knives,
arching up, bending time into
frozen waves.
You once said you were Irish/Scots,
Appalachian.
You called yourself: Applachan.
Sinewy girl --- wiry poppy stems
in you, and engine oil
to soften tenacious roots.
The fever racked you up.
It shook your bones loose.
It blossomed,
pouring you out
in thimbles of awareness.
In those intervals,
blue hills filled your eyes
with summer rain.
I would talk to you of Ireland.
We went there on that last night.
We made a hasty camp
in the dream felled woods,
the deep raw stumps
were already greening.
Then I watched,
and kept watching
as feeble death broke its teeth
on your blood.
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