D.C. in the I.C.U.

 Mother Nature is a bitch,

the kind that gently tongues each little pup all over,

like an overextended lover,

then eats the one or two

she thinks can’t make it through.

Here’s the rant.  It’s over young ideas

of how things should have gone.

Instead, it was the scalpel seams,

breathing machines,

and intake-output plastic hoses

in and out of noses

and other places no one naturally goes,

each smeared with iodine, sewn with a tight stitch,

and wires attached to everything between.

 

(All this had us pretty fried.

because, of course, you could have died.)

 

Natural nature isn’t fair.

trying to snatch you anywhere

else but here and now but for

some ambulance and heliport,

parades of people, including wife,

calling you back each day to life,

interstating back and forth

far south from even farther north.

 

Lines of people who couldn’t get in

betting on whether you’d lose or win

a home place sitting empty, warm

and helpers shoveling after the storm

and chickens laying a lonesome egg

(sometimes two, but who’s to beg

for more when all the hens know something’s off?)

and cat that hides then sneaks and stuffs

herself too full without enough

games to keep her occupied.

 

(Then there came that stretched and silly smile--

that photo of you sent round just in time.)

 

Mama Natura beat you up a bit

and you lay there and took the hit

smirking as if to advertise

you had ‘er by her velvet tongue

and with unnatural assistance,

proved it’s more about the persistence

humans use confronting dung--

collecting it to fertilize our paradise.

Everything is artifice, my friend,

as we persist from end to end.