To Tell You Something

When I lost my ability to speak,
I tried to whisper, ³I¹m leaving now.²
The doctors propped me up, pried
my jaw apart, peered inside.

Like a mute who can hear,
I take in everything.
The superfluity of words is noticeable:
The noise of your voice

cluttering a room, busy, unrhythmical
music.  Our fights never lasted long,
for you began to see humor
in my anger, in my wanting

to run on the jette at Scituate beach,
scrape a knee, stub a toe,
sing a little verse made up
then forgotten -- never written

down.  Responsibility calls me back
to the waiting room of St. Mary¹s
where machines will keep me going
long enough for conversation:

a one-way admonishment
of the senses, the impossible
sensual speech required in losing
the mind, the memory of you

moments before. I am here with little room
for silence. Doctor¹s footsteps clack
back and forth to my door, words
patter among them: multiple

sclerosis, loss of consciousness. You go
downstairs to the giftshop for a newspaper:
the merge of two big companies, some old actor
dead of an overdose, more rain on the Dakotas.

In the Desert

A bowl of fake roses poses in the lobby,
the plastic petals dripping from the heat. I fascinate myself
with the distance between two points, the roses
and me in the faded Tucson light. When water
no longer satisfies, the desert is the place -
vast seas of sand with ocean-floor vegetation.
Everything prickles here
if it¹s real. I abandon the roses,
turn new shades of red outside
as I follow a flirtatious rainbow for miles,
its elusive hues begging to reveal new secrets
when the prickly pear bites, the saguaro punctures.
I hack into a barrel cactus to take a sip. The earth
will drink too greedily when it rains. Long ago,
suitors brought corsages to my doorstep
in the dark New England night, never knowing
the underside of a plastic rose petal
or how someone crafts thorns day in and day out. In the desert,
I love it when a monsoon hits, the splash of cars,
the fragrant odor hanging heavy in the air
of dirt - it always smells just like flowers and earthworms.