Doing the Death We Call Pretty

Doing the Death We Call Pretty

I could look to the trees rusting in the rain,

doing the death we call pretty. Instead, I lord

a little over people parking, coming & going remark silent

on their body language—what gait is revealing—

while I wait by the printer for a report

I don’t even need. The chore, it let me remember

the world, free & flowing. On the hospital elevator

this morning, an ancient head-scarfed woman

w/a beard, wheeled by four jockeying children.

A young, halfway-pregnant couple. A woman my mother’s shape

in a bob wig, on her way to the breast clinic.

A surgeon’s Crocs streaked w/purple-brown blood.

Jackson Pollock. In the caf, a man tosses fries

into his mouth for breakfast, his entire head & eyes

bandaged up, white & soft as a Q-tip. Vision

is my drug. I can’t tell if it’s working, b/c how

did my life become a sequence of how do I kill

the next ten minutes? & the next ten? & the next?

When is someone going to finally turn to me & say,

all this time, what have you been doing?

It will be an accusation, & a mercy.