She Knew a Lovely Lake
Everything that can hurt
is chronic in an old body.
An arrow through the heart is acute,
a bullet in the knee is an in-the-moment pain
that lasts a lifetime,
however, a chronic chronicity is the real killer.
She had had enough. Windows held nothing for her.
Food tasted like burnt paper,
breathing a grating torture.
She once knew a lovely lake,
one she had swam upon as free as a fish.
A lover or would-be lover
waved her to come ashore
but she would linger in the lake
letting the waters caress her in parts that
hands could never reach.
It takes forever just to rise and sit at the edge of the bed,
Bones rasp on bones, hot wires thread joints.
At last she looks over the side of the mattress
into that blue clear lake again.
She could dive now, she thinks,
dive headlong, swan dive
and never return to the surface.
In that moment, a mercy arrives;
a dragging grudge of infirmity
becomes a soul-deep-daggering,
swampy tumors long moldering
in the indolent mouth of a remorseless beast
burst into devouring bonfires
flares that ram her into the unbearable.
With a scream of joy she dives weightless
into sweet and obliviating waters
shedding years of drought,
and far from the maul and clank
of indifferent time.
~~~~~
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