They tell me the radiologist
they tell me our family doctor
they tell me some specialist
they tell me this:
when they know something
they will tell me.

I would rather wait for
spring or butterflies
or dawn or grandchildren
or snail races
or the Messiah.

I have watched the celluloid bomb’s timer tick
as our paper hero sweats
the blue wire or the green;
I have rewound and replayed
our son’s sudden bloody mask
rising from brutal baptism
after he waterskied jaw-first into the dock:
memories, fictions,
muddled by time.
But this has a different Dewey decimal:
and the devilish drippling derangement
of Torquemada’s water torture.

Each night brings its silent
screaming pre-frontal confrontation
with this betrayal
by my body.
Which might be fresh-faced innocent.
I toss and turn all day
hating the telephone
that interrupts my trance
with friendish digressions.

It’s not the disease
I want to scream at the insectoid voice;
and if, after the pivotal conversation
interrupts, I am smiling,
now know I still have to fill
the emptiness the waiting has left.