Some days you get up in the morning
and forget quite why you are alive.
It’s been raining all night. Rain falling still.
The morning sky barely brighter than the night sky.
Your slippers are wrong under the bed,
right where left should be,
left where right should be,
a mistake left uncorrected from the night before.
You fumble putting them on.
Your tongue tastes like wax and dust,
puce if you had to put a color to it.
At your last appointment your doctor said your blood wasn’t right,
too much of something, too little of something else.
You call him ‘your doctor’ but know that is misstated
and he calls you ‘my patient’ but knows that’s incorrect.
You don’t own him and he doesn’t own you.
If not for quakes in the subterranean vaults of your body
you would not know this scientifically prophetic man.
It’s his job to point out the malicious secrets your body keeps from you
and it’s your job to listen as if you were only interested but not terrified.
He seems to enjoy scaring you
but you’re not sure about that.
What his diagnosis does is concentrate your mind
on certain philosophical issues:
being, time and termination.
All things in time end.
This is helpful.
Instead of giving up and giving out
you get up and go out to your car.
You notice bird crap on the windshield.
You return to the medical building’s men’s room,
yank down three paper towels.
You return to your car.
You clean the windshield.
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written in 2008