A Room With No View

A fall, a broken tailbone.
At 92, a nursing home is just a colon
heading to an open grave.
I don't want the book to end.
Not this sterile, lonely way
in a room with no view.
I pace and twitch, fuss and plan.
Arrange a stack of Hallmark cards,
their glossy wishes for your health,
moot as milking teat-less cows.
Stick my fingers in a pot 
to see if flowers have thirsty roots,
comb the blankets, curl your hair, 
webs of passing summer clouds
pressed against a pillowcase
like cotton puffs
condensed by acetone or blood.

I read to you from Erma's book.
Enunciating funny parts to 
break up carnal's kidney stones.
My voice as loud as pounding trains 
in tunnels made of metal tubes.
You're child-less, so I call you "Mom." 
We need a lie as badly as
an addict craves a fix of snow.
The white commode is icy 
under wrinkled gowns. It hurts to sit. 
Age deserves a better nest
than brittle sheets and passing gurneys
noisy from their tortured wheels.
Pain comes through your iron teeth
like wires in electric chairs.
My pulse is such a feckless drum.
Common as an atom split,
but still I seek mosaics
from a broken plate.
Bulky asteroids of death --
rulers on a battered knuckle
headed for a house I love.

© Janet I. Buck

***First Published in Dakota House Journal

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