poem of the day
In the Room
Outside, freeway and river
seem to balance out, each asleep
where real air hurries into tiny schools
to lick the claws of mangroves,
and he wakes up
from something very near
time beginning again,
my father's breath
startled, as if
it all could come back to him at once
in just under a minute.
He doesn't squeeze my hand
so much as worry
a familiar spot deep in my palm,
an old habit
just turned up in him,
one that signals
I'm awake, because
he can't make a sound,
and if I'm lucky I look over
in time to see the underbelly of one blue eye
find its spot below the lid
where an imprint of the window
nearing orange
like the sun burned into the eye
must be.
Carol Ann Davis
The Gettysburg Review
Autumn 2002