This Day

This day I watched the

pleur evac drain. I did not leave the room

for modesty, or to have a look around, for clues

about what makes this particular situation here so. Fridges,

pictures on fridges, bedside tables, pictures on the walls -

that's how you know. I watched how a hose in the

flesh can go through and drain into a bottle, serous fluid, little blood,

any hose, any fluid.

Its the first day of spring after a warm and dry winter. I

sit out by the river, fast and deep, and if you took a sip? Can you take a sip

of it? Safely? Its the Merrimack, a huge bounty,

or a waterway. Water in with tide, out with tide. Boats on top. Can you take a

sip, if you're thirsty?

We'll be irrigating by late spring. Everything is so early. Weeks early, a month early.

Daffodils, you came today, you were due in April. An azalea in a sunny spot

burst into purple, like so what, so what.

I wrote, GLORIOUS. I got asked, please make that call outside

I can't have that traced to this house. We'll keep evacuating the fluid until

maybe, the pleural space will close. All the crocuses close up

at night, still chilly. Its only March.

He'll still die. In his situation. I left the house, as asked. I wish his body well, folds

of stomach skin pooched down, face a little gray. It wasn't personal.

What was personal was GLORIOUS. A review of intentions, which is a lot to

1. take on

2. get back to.

You can't doodle it. Also, it will need bigger paper, and to be

rewritten. March this year is rewritten as April. Backwards, forwards. Ocean

tide, driving the river in, pulling it out, boats on top. Perhaps then, yes,

things aren't as in control as we think they are.

I'm not thirsty. I talk, I say a few things, the phone radio shuts off mid-sentence,

because there is no radio

with a battery this low. I was battered, you know.

GLORIOUS. Everything, in some fashion, and including the

pleur evac, is draining. Time runs out. Unfailingly.

Les fleurs. Early this spring, later on your grave, in a field to pick. Roadside.

Color neither serous nor bloody. Today, yellow. Today, purple.

Tide is coming in. The phone is off. River runs backwards.

A sip is risky. The early bloom is risky, in March.

I'll watch. I will, unfailingly, find out what happens.

I have the absolute intention to, I do not intend at all. Find out what happens.

Nous espérons qu'il va pleuvoir.

That would

solve everything.