Coping with the storm-A tribute
to Dr JS and his patient 12th November 2012
Superstorm heaves in, unstoppable,
Black Cyclops eye spitting
spikes.
Hearts pound as adrenalin bangs
and info-mmercials
send the city to higher ground.
Is this real?
Will the clapperboard shout
'Cut. It's a wrap'?
In Rockaway, they crouch
behind closed doors and boarded
windows.
Three day
ago she heard she had the cancer.
Two days
ago scans made weather maps
illuminating
its path.
Yesterday
she learned therapies won’t help.
No drugs
or rays or knife.
Today is
all.
Her doctor stands beside her as
she lies quietly wired.
Monitors dawn chorus to the hiss
of oxygen
and quietly padding feet. She
tells him and he listens.
Her fears for others, worries for
the battered homeless,
worries for their number, worries
for the wake that icy foams
behind bitter swirling skirts.
The wages of sin is death
she angry whispers to her pillow.
The storm fades, flickering
screens reveal
cars tossed like salad into a
ribboned bowl of boardwalk.
Old man in baseball cap with a
face
that’s used to smiling, now wet
with tears.
Sighing she opens to express
all that has gone and cannot be
the same.
She cannot be the same.
The void of her words
forms a space and they sit
together, silent .
Pale morning light seeps
through sterile glass.
Smiling she weeps as memories
arc behind her eyes.
He takes her hand and feels it
cool,
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