IV
And there are moments
When mind becomes untethered
And loses itself in loss
Like a mole confused and blind
Groping in the labyrinth of tunnels
It has built
Hardly able
To find its way back
Especially when wary
Of returning

A return of man’s savagery
A return to paucity
Scavenging to survive–
Even the sparse doctors and nurses
Or trained anesthesiologists and amputers
With no degree, as I suspect they are,
Suspect them of not having,
Are scavengers
(How long they will
Allow me,
Lower than them,
Scavenger below scavengers,
To stay in this bed
And consume rations
Is anyone’s guess).

So why not descend into those tunnels
Lost in loss–
Loss endemic
Even in the happiest of lives:
To be ten is to relinquish
Beloved habits, associations, persons
That once were embedded in being nine.
And all who were once the he
That was a boy
Lose most boyhood memories
Relatively soon
Shedding that cocooned being
Altogether.

So, not a betrothal per se
It was little promised to
And although the thought
Of her kept me going
In those nights of battles
Like the abused tortured child
Who befriends, in his imagination,
The embraces of Jesus Christ,
The only value of a non-existing god
In saving children from
Suicidal or patricidal/matricidal aims,
She was free to go,
And now having learned
That her handsome boy
Is a defective product,
A limb-less tree,
She seeks her pollen
Elsewhere.
Of course she would.
Not a letter,
Not a post card,
Nothing–
Nothing to be shocked about
As all is nothing