It happened in my morning firsts,
yawn, piss, and pills,
forty-five years out of childhood.
At the bedside in Williston,
I became suddenly irrational.

I tried to dial the phone. I could not.
I tried to say help. I could not.
The interruption lasted less than a minute.
My wife was downstairs.
I rattled about in my head,
help yourself!

The clinician calls it a transient ischemic attack.
Transient, her mercy word.

This is forty-five.
Not yet the age for pall bearers,
yet here I am.

Now I am forced to account
for blood vessels, rhythms, flutters,
for the hole in the heart my mother made.

Not death, not yet.
More like the ninth inning,
not Roy Hobbs,
but me,
the ump drunk,
the bulbs arcing,
scoreboard fucked,
still at bat
swinging with a busted wrist.

the body reminding,
I’m meat, not master.

now I’m on blood thinners.

—Augustus Rivers