The Interruption

It happened between yawn, piss, and pills,
forty-five years out of childhood.
At the bedside in Williston
I was irrational.

I tried to dial the phone. I could not.
I tried to say help. I could not.
It lasted less than a minute.
My wife was downstairs.
Inside my head:
help yourself!

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

This is not the age for pallbearers.

Now I account
for platelets, rhythms, flutters,
for the hole in the heart my mother gave.

So I think of baseball.

The ninth inning.
Not Roy Hobbs.
Me.
The ump is drunk,
the lights arc,
the scoreboard is fucked,
and I’m still at bat,
swinging on a busted wrist.

The body reminds me:
I’m meat, not master.

Now I’m on blood thinners.

Augustus Rivers