STEVEN CRAMER
Mter Bypass
Jor 111
Y
lIIotiler
The room, violet with iris and stasis, reeked
Those afternoons I sat with you; workers
In dustmasks thronged the skeletal girders
Just outside your window. Pouring concrete
Or crouched brooding over their blueprints,
They huddled and consulted like the doctors
We quizzed together, or I'd quiz as you slept.
Seasoned patients wobbled down the corridor,
Clutching red, heart-shaped pillows, inscribed
With the surgeon's autograph, and cross–
Sections of their reconstructed arteries,
All their lesions or occlusions cured.
Fresh from surgery, your sewn-up chest
Almost glowed through the sheer nightgown,
Its embossed ridge of stitches curving down
Between your breasts. What son could resist
A furtive look? When once you briefly woke
To my staring, I fclt sure you'd recognized
That boy caught pecking through a dime-sized
Scratch in the whitewashed bathroom window
Thirty summers ago - an afternoon I took a dare
That left me exposed to you, breasts and hair
A white and dark ringing I couldn't name.
Today your yellowing catheter bag is gone,
And stabbing cries down the hall resound
Like a newborn. But it's pain
You wake
to
on this ward, and sutured wounds -
A husband dead , a son - no sedative can numb.
