Dark Ages
Once, he had brain fever; I stayed
at the hospital all night. All night
he wanted water, wanted
to pour the glass himself, and though
his hands unsteadily flapped
I kept handing over
the plastic pitcher. I had no answer
when the night nurse hissed, Why
do you keep letting him?
her third time out the door, arms
loaded with soaked sheets.
I have no answer now,
only a sharpened sense
that neither of us matters
to the future, the way
the monk whose breath
blown through a hollow reed
sealed gold leaf to gesso
on a page of the Book of Kells
has otherwise left no trace.
He could not read the words
he copied out, yet labored
over his share for decades.
What if each night of our lives
is one illuminated page? Then
see the cup, the straw; the glaze
of water on the swinging table
arm becomes a lapis lazuli
Celtic spiral. See the nurse
—a lion—who stalks
the margins (she’s tinted
vermilion) of a psalm you know
by heart, the one in which your cup runs over. 