his new, expensive shoes

This Morning

 

I wish I had tossed the roses,
rinsed the vase of stench,
soaped and scrubbed it clean.
That kind of end to it.
Not this chitchat
in the waiting room, our son
in the OR, again, being
saved. We too, again,
sitting it out, after years,
the same straight-back chairs.
You seem fragile, he says.
I cannot bear his beard,
his new, expensive shoes.

Barbara Helfgott Hyett

Rift
University of Arkansas Press