Leg

Driving to the hospital,

My father talks, fidgets away silence.

We pass halted bulldozers,

Fallen trees, torn roots exposed.

Limbs once stretching upward unencumbered

Lie discarded underfoot,

Sodden, hived with toadstools.

In the passenger seat

My father fingers his infected leg

Grown twice its normal size.

 

At the hospital door, he enters;

For a moment, I hold back.

A pebble in my throat

Grows into a stone,

Blocks my breath.

Heavy with it, I bend,

Become pavement,

Hardened ground.

I know where my legs won’t carry me:

Shelter beneath the fallen tree.

I forgive their hesitation,

The bulldozer,

The toadstools,

Everything in the world

That stands between me

And the next moment,

As sorrow enters my bloodstream

Like a wind, like a saw,

Like a great tearing of roots.

 

 

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