My very rough draft
Daniel England
Wednesday in the Hospital Worship Center
Her finger ran down the lines going back
a few pages in the prayer request book.
Bequests for those who’d fallen to strokes,
cancer, to remember the innocents in Iran,
wisdom to child protective investigators.
She sat in the corner of the dimly lit chapel,
bum knees making her forego the kneeling bench,
identifying the icons in frosted glass doors
that separated her from the security desk across the hall.
Hindo pratek, Buddhist dhama wheel, Islam’s star and crescent,
Zoroastrian wings, Taoist yin and yang, Celtic cross,
Mayan year bearer, Unitarian circle and lampm Star of David.
She fingered the Rosary she’d bought in Jerusalem
and hoped when it came to questions of Eternity
she’d “backed the right horse.”
This was the last visit to her best friend, hoping
he’d survive the medical transport from hospital
to hospice care back home in Onalaska
to die at peace.
She was a plump forgettable woman,
player of the euphonium,
professor emeritus in chemistry,
mother of four.
She ended her rosary, rose
stiffly from her seat, whote
in the book, her tribute
to her true comrade.
“To Jules.
And forever, brother,
hail and farewell” *
Dan Reed England * Catullus