She looks above my head
and searches the cosmic blackboard
for scribblings of truth
about a coming time

Moments, names, places
integrities, failings, beliefs

she calls the names of brothers
flung throughout the land
seeing the actor, the gay, the cowboy
she sees their hurt
in this cloud above my head

and I wish to turn
glance upward

but I do not

___

I am an interviewer of the spoken word
the official memories
of persons waiting to be known
even to themselves

I collect a bag of tapes
which I will use to capture her breath
and transform it into ink
and history

The day I am to drive to her house
she calls and says not to come
Her eye, which the doctor says needed an implant
has begun to swell
with pain and blurriness

I tell her to be well
and send my subtle wishes
into the air to support her healing

But I forget
a few moments is all it takes
for the infection
to sidestep my wall of ether wish
and invade her vitreous sac
collect in a toxic pool
behind her sight

and take her eye hostage

She too does not notice
the D-Day
in her eye

She travels with her son
on a day trip to no place important

and being hardened against her regular pain
does not contact the doctor
nor rests or takes some salve to bend the onslaught

Instead she waits
until the Monday when she cries
(a rare occurrence for her)
and the doctors sends her to West Palm Beach
where they take her to the theater of knives

---

So now I stand beside her
holding her hand
stroking her forehead

the Demerol has slurred her tongue
the eye patch has segregated her binocular vision
and a heart monitor
sings the regular news
of an uncertain chest
calculating ribs
an abacus of danger

She looks up at my lesbian friend Catherine
standing beside me
sees a golden chain between us
and wonders if we have become lovers

"I have some issues to complete,"
Catherine tells her

"Are you going to marry her?"
Clare asks, one-eyed

"When she wants,"
I say
knowing she won't

"That's nice,"
Clare says
falling back into almost blindness

"That's nice."

And as we tiptoe away
I cannot help but feel like Oedipus' fingers
that clawed at orbs
known and unknown
until all was darkness around him

but then I realize
how egotistic I am being

thinking the universe has nothing better to do
that to steal the sight
of those I love

as if somehow my darkness
has a quality
better than that
of the night