Daily April poem: on the couch

POST-OP

You're pale against the red velour

and where your moose pyjamas gape

your belly is jaundiced

the curry-powder yellow of betadine.

They promised you a popsicle,

pressed a berry-scented mask

to your struggling face

and then you woke

to uncooperative legs and tender tummy,

a tube biting your hand like a snake

and monitor cables streaming

from your skinny ribcage.

Now you lie limp as the blanket

draped over your knees.

When you try to move, confusion

blooms: why does it hurt?

And clustered like ghosts

in the back of my heart:

all of the children who won't

be fully recovered tomorrow

all the parents who've learned

to mask oxycodone with honey,

who shave their own heads bare

in powerless solidarity...

How does God bear it?

Maybe the same way we do.

The heart shatters, but keeps beating

just love, just love, just love.

The second 30x30 poem prompt was "on the couch." I immediately thought of our son on the couch when he was recuperating from (perfectly ordinary, unremarkable) hernia surgery. Then I thought of the recent tough news at Superman Sam (The post you didn't want to read), and of all of the kids who are recuperating -- or not recuperating -- from infinitely more terrifying medical adventures than ours. The reality that children suffer is almost more than the heart can bear. Of course, we ache, and then we keep on loving; and in that, I think we mirror God, the cosmic Parent Who does the same.

If you want to send a note to Sam, you can write to him at Sam Sommer, E584 / Children's Hospital of Wisconsin / P.O. Box 1997 / Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201-1997. Receiving notes, cards, etc (many featuring superheroes in some way) cheered him last time they were in the hospital for an extended stay.

On the 30 poems / 30 days front: some of us who are writing poems in response to these prompts are submitting them to the 30x30 website. If you're interested in other people's responses to these prompts, you can check out each day's submissions by clicking on each prompt link, here. And if you're interested in other folks who are attempting this same daily poem feat during National Poetry Month, don't miss NaPoWriMo, now in its tenth year!