Living in the Land of Limbo: Fiction and Poetry about Family Caregiving

13. The Ship Pounding

76 Fiction and Poetry about Family Caregiving 13 The Ship Pounding  Donald Hall Each morning I made my way among gangways, elevators, and nurses’ pods to Jane’s room to interrogate grave helpers who had tended her all night like the ship’s massive engines kept its propellers turning. Week after week, I sat by her bed with black coffee and the Globe. The passengers on this voyage wore masks or cannulae or dangled devices that dripped chemicals into their wrists, but I believed that the ship travelled to a harbor of breakfast, work, and love. I wrote: “When the infusions are infused entirely, bone marrow restored and lymphoblasts remitted, I will take my wife, as bald as Michael Jordan, home to our dog and day.” Months later these words turn up among papers on my desk at home, as I listen to hear Jane call for help, or speak in delirium, Donald Hall, “The Ship Pounding,” from Without: Poems. Copyright © 1998 by Donald Hall. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Husbands and Wives 77 waiting to make the agitated drive to Emergency again, for re-admission to the huge vessel that heaves water month after month, without leaving port, without moving a knot, without arrival or destination, its great engines pounding. ...