A ROUTINE PROCEDURE

Poet Gary Metras.

When they began to wheel you away,
I said, “Wait,” took your hand gently, kissed
your lips with the weight and air
of forty-one years married.
A hysterectomy, age and all that.
“Not to worry,” the young surgeon says.
But still, still the anxiety, the uncertainty.
The great dark about to descend.
The vast emptiness of anesthesia.

What if our eyes had never locked
across that dance floor when we were teens—
No Spangdalem with first apartment
in the cellar, lacking TV, no radio,
full of dark, German furniture
we grew to love because
that was where we loved.
No Paris that Christmas, walking in cold rain
to Midnight Mass at Notre Dame,
no night spent dreaming our life
in the hotel feather bed, such passion, the hopes.

In the waiting room, I watch
the electronic status board on the wall,
patient initials, doctor, color bar to indicate
the procedure’s level. I walk outside,
smoke a cigarette, remember
how invincible our flesh once was.
The rising sun harsh with early summer heat
humidity hazing the sky, waiting,
waiting for your lips to return my kiss.

– Gary Metras

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