An Attempt to Explain

DILAUDID

Pain-has an Element of Blank
It cannot recollect
When it begun--or if there were
A time when it was not--
--Emily Dickinson


Pain slides, drip by drip, away.
Tubing, monitors, white walls,
Windows prism, swirl, and pulse.
Slowly, surely stacked and building,
Brain becomes eye and vision,
Dreaming. Still the patient burning

Coils, burrowing deep the marrow, tensing
Steady, tensing steady,
Opiatic casing easing, sensing respite,
Smolder growing. Steady blur and
Senses smoky, morning glows in
Milky iridescence, the close grid
Of screen flowing quiet against
The sun bleeding bright and blue
At the window edge. Tremendous

Swells the knowing, waking hard
And finally clear, sweat and pressure
Proving real the second shock,
The second waking--the vivid, strange
And concrete truth of just before,
a postscript dream, not dream--parallel
Reality playing out in the space
Of conscious dawning, the bridge
Between this fantasy and hallucination.

The patient burning sinks fang
Snap, uncoiled. The marrow tenses.
The dull venom courses quickly,
Fading from puncture, prairie fire
Ooze, spreading concentrated,
White, hot from potential motion
Unleashed. The narrow crook

Of thumb depressed, the silent
Flow, transparent, clouds and covers,
Creeping over, cooling to embers,
Closing in. The patient burning coils,
Waiting. Casing surface ripples gently
Steady, stoking breeze the embers
Waxing smolder. Time slides, drip

By drip, away. Tubing, monitors,
White halls, windows prism, swirl,
And pulse. Slowly, surely stacked
And building, brain becomes eye
And vision, dreaming.