Your heart attack says,
in spite of what we thought,
time does not flow like a river.
It pulses, like blood
through our veins,
systolic certainty confined.
I played checkers with your dad
when I was a child.
Your smile is his grin,
hooking my leg with a cane,
telling me you're still in the game.
I don't know why I think of it now,
that day you flew home
from the side of his grave
and gave me that tuning fork
he had given to you,
back in the thirties, when
anything chance was a toy.
I recognized it came from
the odds and the ends,
the fishing weights made
from old scraps of lead,
and lures he had carved
from left over wood.
I used to play, on the sly,
in his shed; and I would strike
a perfect “A”, Concert Pitch,
for the horn toads and ant lions
outside in the cactus garden.
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Comments: 28
The magnetic way of linking each lines with a continuing phrase works perfectly.
bitter taste of sugar
Everything you write is superb.
Working in a hospital for 18 yrs and hearing the sounds that generate from the er sounds like a Concert if you listen .