So I'm sitting here on the lawn, my legs burning. I look
Up at the house where my wife is and think, What now, Hon?
Maybe she's spotted something I missed.
But the big window is dark, and Dollie is deep inside,
Working on dinner. I may have to solve this one on my own.
No, this is the hospital, five nights later.
Grafts stapled on both thighs,
Donor sites peeled like cucumbers,
Quenched flames still flaming.
A long Hydrocodone dream, with once a lovely
Jolt of intravenous Dilaudid, repealing pain ex machina.
This first night after surgery, when I close my eyes,
It’s the moment that won’t quit:
On the lawn, alone, on fire,
With no help coming.
In fact it’s mostly what I deserve, having made the worst
Of rookie mistakes, tossing gasoline into a fire not really out.
When the flame wicks up from the bottom of the burn barrel
(It's been hiding out, nursing evil schemes) up and out
To ignite my clothes, I’m not even really surprised, or mostly at myself;
Then more at my gloved hands, that can’t beat out these flames, and more still
At the eager way the fire fastens on my pants,
Flammable it seems, cheap nylon splashed
With gas on the recoil, and earlier when I
Fueled the mowers. There is no way
To strip in time, unpuzzling zippers and shoelaces and shoes.
So then it’s “Stop, drop, and roll,” the way
You learn as a kid and want to try but no one says
The fire can just hurry back.
So then I’m on my butt, out of ideas.
The window dark, the flames eager in my lap.
On my way to nothing, conceivably,
Or to some charred life I can’t imagine,
I ask what we men always ask our women:
Everything, instantly, and a little extra:
Where is how can what shall why does who am
And Dear, do you have an idea for me, here in the freshening flames?
It's not magic, exactly. Spend
Five decades with someone and you know.
I’ve learned the brisk way
She sizes up a situation, sees what matters, blurts it out.
Not strange, then, to hear Dollie
So clear in my mind: The pond, John, the pond!
Of course, that’s it: I was just going to say so myself.
I stumble over there and get in
And hope comes hissing back.
After that it’s just surgery, just rehab, just months
Of her quilter’s hands, twice surgically repaired,
Winding love’s obscure messages.
Fending off her own diabetic fatigue,
She builds the bandages again each day,
The ointment, the special membrane, the gauze and sleeves,
Wincing when I wince.
First nearly an hour each leg, later faster, always
With a certain air of ownership.
Yes, old woman, yes of course:
For what it’s worth, this blistered flesh
And all it abuts,
Yours alone, yours forever.
