Past the broad window by the dispensary
Apollo falls to the sea, torching the bay.
Hefty wives gather at the nursing station
and mutter at the price of grain.
Two patients who labour under the billious stone
are the subject of discourse between physic and surgeon
whose acolytes are solemn before the notes they write.
Bed four is eighty three, a scrap in a shift
- who enacts her Eleusinian rite by dancing.
Not even Lorazepam can dim her burning.
Later, I will take as libation
an arterial blood gas from side room seven
and offer it to the oracle in Pathology,
asking “To which God shall we pray?”
© Daniel Racey 2017.
Reproduced with permission.
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