Admitted For Observation
for Maxine, Morgan, & Logan
C Ra McGuirt
No dead-end-job related fall
to crush a disk, or slice of knife
by accident or in despair;
no reclusive spider bite,
necrotic love to sick the gut
with strangled-scream-inducing pus
has put me on this bed tonight,
nor have I been crucified
of breath by a congestive heart.
I loll here on this sheet of white
with ears attuned to any sound
of true dissatisfaction from
my sleep-deprived soft-snoring wife
or either of our newborn sons
bottled, burped, and slumbering
soft beside her. I am here
not in sickness, but in health--
a foetal father of 53
gestating in the womb of life.
(Queen Elizabeth II Hospital, Room 221
Grande Prairie, Alberta, July 17, 2010)
