Children’s Hospital, 2011
On the fifth sleepless night
I scavenged drawers of bedside
table hoping for a dog-eared magazine
or hospital pamphlet, depending
on at least a navy blue Bible
placed by THE GIDEONS
Nesting with dust bunnies and foreign strands
of hair, beneath the uncracked spine of New Testament,
was a phone book
Greater Lexington Area
The cover was filmy and smudged like cabinets
in a well-used kitchen. I thumbed pages, house numbers,
fences I’d hopped, the names of friends’ fathers–
those trellises that splintered under the awkward vines
of their daughters’ growth.
An IV pump droned
through stale night noise. Your mouth
the color of bruised peach. I was thankful
for something though I wasn’t
sure what.
1 reply on “Children’s Hospital, 2011”
I enjoyed this poem very much. I love the line “those trellises that splintered…” Such great imagery there. And fitting with the reflective and nostalgic leaps that the mind often makes when contemplating life and death and the meaning of it all. Nicely done.