In the Examining Room

The Minister of Health
is down the hall
in a room like this
(except for me)
I swing my legs
from my table perch
as omens rich
with immanence
infiltrate my mind

Voices soak
through wallboard dikes
the problems are not nice
ailing terms
their crowded names
recalcitrant to tact
but no one breaks
the protocol of fact
with passion torn from need

An old woman
smaller than her life
tows slowly by
on walker stilts
her passage past
my doorway lens
a paraphrase of
Zeno’s paradox
her days made brief
by space not time

Obituary calm
from room to room
despair elation
side by side
their vigil played
for Certainty
who’s hard to find
even Death
is dressed in doubt

Some moments more
a word a sign
the crumpled fear
that goes unsaid
this way the living
that the dead

And when I’m done
and sent along
they’ll change
the paper sheet
on which I sat
and that will be
the end of me
the end of that

10/25/94

Copyright 1994 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission