To Sally Ride, Patron Saint of Orbit

(moon)

you know, in wind

like this,

wind that men in ships

still fear,

I have to think that maybe,

sitting with you

cradled under her arm

God consoles herself

with your light.

It’s the only way she can stand

human grief:

Witnessing.  Reflecting.  Powerless

to intervene. 

XI.

“But please don’t fall alone into the world again.

We will be old, you couldn’t recognize us waving across the arctic

            of remembrance.” Deborah Digges

                                    “Raising the Wolly Mammoth”

shock is a simple glaze- a daze

of feather tender blur.

and you and i were the only ones

in this world—

you, down the hall in a plastic cradle,

a lump of heat illuminating everything

except what was sick and me

hooked to machines.

later, a nurse practitioner would lean

against the one cabinet in the room

and offer us options

on where to take you next:

Boston Children’s or

Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth Hitchcock—

and because we knew a little boy

who’d been cured of his malignant

brain tumor (he was one when he

was diagnosed) we chose Dartmouth.

i watched them get got you ready

for the med-evac.  CHaD was ninety miles

away.  and i’d stay and wait

and lay alone

and drop my glasses in the sink

and a chip, a little chip

where my pupil lined up

went down the drain

with all the rest.  i saw you once

more before you were strapped

and hooked into a new rectangular

plastic uterus.

i called it your moon suit.