Ambulance

Gentleness had come a great distance to be there,

I thought, as paramedics stanched the warm blood,

signaling one another with their eyes.

I was not as I was, and I didn’t know why,

so I was aware of a shattering, of an unbidden,

moving under the influence of a restoring force.

Like a Japanese fan folding, my spirit seem possessed

of such a simple existence, the sexual principle

no longer at its center, nor memory.

I felt like the personification of an abstraction,

like mercy. My hands were red and swollen.

A great chain, the twitch of my life, dragged against decay.

Then I heard shouts. Far off, a horse whinnied.

I blinked back tears as I was lifted forth.