Wednesday, September 8, 2010

ORTHOPEDICS


The leg is not what you thought it was.
No longer are you walking
to and fro the reconstructed
memories your mind wanders.
Well-lit corridors are a way
outside time, and their stations
hum with voices from around the world.

On your back, unmoving, day after day,
you begin to take apart
what remains of your person.
Someone else can have the sunglasses
and the wallet.  The watch
needs a timer and a reset key.

On one side of the leg, doctors have pulled
skin together with stitches;
the other side’s fish-like design
is a graft taking hold.
An external fixator extends
from foot to hip and keeps in place
countless fractures.

The tree is a painful fact.
The body has been broken
by its puzzle: pieces of bone
that float in the sky.

You recall the brilliance of this sky
and that it did not let you fall asleep.