Joan Colby- Two Poems

THE DAY YOUR DAD DIED

We were young and death had not yet touched us

With its black-gloved index finger

Except for the grandparents who were old

And thus deserved to die. We were young and heartless.

Your dad, only 50, middle-aged, busy,

Then the series of heart attacks as if

The house was being strafed by the aircraft

Of an unknown, but invincible enemy. In and out

Of hospitals, then back to work. We had a baby.

We hardly knew what to do with it

Except love it. Feed it. Keep it clean. Your dad

Smiled and offered it candy it could not eat.

Christmas, he was back in the hospital, this time a prominent

Downtown edifice, where presumably more could be done.

He improved, so we were told. We were expecting his release

By New Year’s. He’d be coming home again, like always.

That early wintry morning, the phone

Urging us to hurry. You drove like hell

Blazed beneath your foot on the pedal

Where all of life depends on motion.

We gathered in the room high above the city.

Your dad, so white, his breath coming hard

And gusty like the prairie winds in January.

The doctor, a sober man in white, looked us over

Told you to take your mother elsewhere,

A waiting room with chairs and a coffee urn.

I started to follow, He took my arm. You

Stay here, he said. Figuring what? I was

The in-law, someone who didn’t matter

In the course of such matters. He handed me

A cool cloth. Wipe his forehead. Hold his hand.

In his, the syringe. He looked at me.

I’m going to help this guy. You understand?

AMANITA: DESTROYING ANGEL

                                                                                      

Smooth white cap of an Amish girl

In a buggy pulled by a trotter. Her hands

Fold over the sins of pleasure.

Frilled skirt of a gypsy,

Dirty white and ragged, her plump thighs

Trembling to dance like Salome.

Symbiotic with oaks,

The hammocks where they gather,

To be gathered by the unwary

Innocent in their little knowledge,

That birds and squirrels consume

What must confer goodness.

Imagine the canny god

Who inveigled the Viceroy to mimic

The sour Monarch or pasted

An eyespot of an owl

Upon a frail wing. The stink

Of spoiled meat should prove

A warning, but greed fills its

Basket. Eat as angels might slicing

The tempting flesh with flaming swords.