A Certain Light by Marie Howe

A Certain Light

 

He had taken the right pills the night before.

We had counted them out

 

from the egg carton where they were numbered so there’d be no mistake.

He had taken the morphine and prednisone and amitriptiline

 

and florinef and vancomycin and halcion too quickly

and had thrown up in the bowl Joe brought to the bed—a thin string

 

of blue spit—then waited a few minutes, to calm himself,

before he took them all again. And had slept through the night

 

and the morning and was still sleeping at noon, or not sleeping.

He was breathing maybe twice a minute, and we couldn’t wake him,

 

we couldn’t wake him until we shook him hard calling, John wake up now

John wake up—Who is the president?

 

And he couldn’t answer.

His doctor told us we’d have to keep him up for hours.

 

He was all bones and skin, no tissue to absorb the medicine.

He couldn’t walk unless two people held him.

 

And we made him talk about the movies: What was the best moment in

On The Waterfront? What was the music in Gone With The Wind?

 

And for seven hours he answered, if only to please us, mumbling

I like the morphine, sinking, rising, sleeping, rousing,

 

then only in pain again. But wakened.

So wakened that late that night, in one of those still blue moments

 

that were a kind of paradise, he finally opened his eyes wide,

and the room filled with a certain light we thought we’d never see again.

 

Look at you two, he said. And we did.

And Joe said, Look at you.    And John said, How do I look?

 

And Joe said, Handsome.