After the Diagnosis
Brigitte Goetze
Snowy straitjackets restrain the firs.
In front of me, hills and mounds
form feet and folded hands,
stiff below a pulled-up sheet.
I breathe the stinging cold.
Silence slows my pulse,
shadows fill my tracks.
Still, the old oaks fingers point
towards the moon, a pale and elevated host.
Branch-built arches raise a ghostly abbey,
where black-cowled juncos murmur
like ancient priest-physicians
incantations which incline
this body to the surgeonīs knife.
