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Dylan and Hendrix in a Jar
- Red Hen Press
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80 dylAn And hendrix in A JAr When the insurance bills started to come in, Each procedure under separate code, Each brain scan, x-ray, blood screen From three separate hospitals, each doctor’s Different reading, different charge, Each on its own piece of paper Was the first time I cried. We’d done the funeral already A group of us bumping our way Single file through the woods, the trail I’d run on each day he was kicking inside, My friend the philosophy professor Stumbling and struggling with the Austrian pine My husband and I had selected, Pricking his hands on the needles When it tried to pitch off The rusted Sears wagon, Rough and bump down the trail over tree roots Me leading the way, making jokes About that Faulkner book Where the mother’s handmade coffin kept falling From the wagon And she started to stink. 81 And when our friends each read Their own tribute or poem And Amy the lawyer Played “Amazing Grace” on the violin, We dug a hole for the tree, Deep because it was October And the pine had a long, long winter to survive So we dug our hands in the peat moss And lovingly packed in the roots. I looked around the woods clearing Wondering why their voices broke When they read the words And sang the notes, Only my mother straight-faced and even Rolling her eyes Because we were singing “All Along the Watchtower,” And she told us, quite loudly In the line bumping back How inappropriate she thought that was, But I didn’t cry, Just as in the hospital When they started to give him morphine for pain But really to slow his heart, And drugged, no longer struggling, Tubes out of his nose, wires pulled from his head, From his chest, I held him, Not crying, And when his social security card Arrived in the mail, still not crying, When the hospital nurses Took plaster casts of his feet And I talked to the organ tissue donation bank, Still not crying— [44.204.204.14] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:55 GMT) 82 It was pieces of paper that made me cry, Months later, twenty each day Day after day after day, Insurance bills The only story of his life, My only documentation. ...