Recovery Room

     by Gail Entrekin

A cheerful nurse has come for me
to say that you are waking
and she leads me through the swinging door
into a room with three cream-colored mummies
lined up on their cots, and the farthest one,
unquestionably, is you, my boney balding
silver-bearded angel, just returning
from your flight, your dream sleep
someplace where no tubes and wires
pin you to this world,
no machines swallow you up,
take pictures of your organs,
find out things about you
that you don’t know yourself,
no men cut and paste and fail
to tell you what they know
and we, so desperately, need
to know.

The blue of your eyes
is the only color in the face of your absence,
and for a long time you drift in and out
so it’s hard to know when you are here.
But now you part your dry lips, search
for your voice, and ask again, What did he say?
I tell you again, unfazed by this repetition,
not so very different from our daily forgettings,
our system of gentle reminders, learning
to set aside our pride, our touchiness,
to laugh because sorrow is so wearing.

I take your long cold hand in my two
warm ones as I have taken you again
and again into my heat, and I tell you,
We don’t know.
We have to wait and see.