(Mark Buckawicki, Wikimedia Commons)                     

                               Hearing The Cry For Help

Denise was in intensive care

Charts, tubes, pumped stomach stench.

The day could not assert itself.

Vague stratus cover thinned over cumulus clumps to almost-blue.

Street noises muted.

Sixteen kilometres away,

The scuffed tile in the classroom wore on,

Dully resenting shoes and teenage desks,

Perennial as their yak-hah noise.

While up in Mercy General

Across several strips of asphalt

Somewhere

She lay,

pushing off commitment, 

pushing off life and death at once,

with a line of light

Not quite flat.

   

                   (credit: Motown 31, Wikimedia Commons)