CANCER WARD

{My Dear Great-Grandmother's Dying]

For Edward Taylor

I wonder
In her flesh
What dark things grow.
They show up bright
And garish
On the silver plates
In darkened rooms.

I wonder
What wild and thankless young
Ran down the bellows
Of her lungs
All reft
And tore her coral trees
Asunder.

No wonder
She should perish.

The dank air lay
A while
Within the fireplace
Of her brain
And left
The spurts and echoes
Of old flames.

Max Edward Cordonnier
Revision of a 60's poem