In the Hospital

I'm in the hospital, not dying,

and Walt still has a faculty of perception of humor, says

the lesions upon his cancerous lungs

are hillocked and swirled like chocolate kisses.

We roommates have a fate in common.

We prove to be helpful, showing our symptoms

the way rings do their stones,

as granting on a plane above our bodies,

and we're one as well as the other hooked up to IV lines,

morphine soaking our medulla oblongatas

til we the two hear bagpipes and a wild fiddle.

I think about Walt, about liking him,

the kind of liking soldiers have

when they find themselves behind enemy lines,

relying upon each other's grace and strength

I watched him rest for hours today

in a rush of winter day-star

Light seemed to film his skin,

to fill his goblet and bowl.

Jack Israel works for a chain of gasoline stations based outside of Philadelphia. He has published metrical compositions in River City, Southern verse Review, and other journals.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated Sep/Oct 1998

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