|
For My Husband's Finger Cut Off in a Steel Mill Accident
By the bridge, my husband's finger sits too tired to thumb a ride, it watches cool water swirl, counts herons diving for fish and sighs.
We all get tired of the road and thinking, maybe, the next car might pull over, roll its window down ask where we're bound.
What if his finger knocked, one day, at our door, wearing a pop can ring or new scar, gravel amethyst, glass shards or brier hooks?
How to greet each other bandage the canyon of awkward pauses between friends separated these many seasons.
After high school, my husband's first job, graveyard shift, who knows how the slitter got turned on, his work glove a boy's mitten filled with a bloody snowball.
Low whispers, the hospital's locker room: a doctor's hand grabbed sterile pliers, ripped the dangling finger free— ordered a pain shot to be given later.
Missing parts get loaded secretly, box cars taken away in darkness, they grow pale, wide-eyed and wait for anybody who'll listen to truth.
You can say no crime happened in the red mist where a doctor did things backwards, quickly, and my husband's pinky finger
was no prince held for ransom, no famous pilot's son, yet I lift it up, slide the red chalk across this wall:
Dear world, I miss my brothers. I was the smallest candle on his right hand, all light is needed.
Jeanne Bryner
**************
:hi:
RL
|