FLORIDA
The dream tells me where I am:
nose close to a tulip tree
filled with lime green finches,
one that sports a spectacled mask
miming my every move. But here
all the palms look the same
and I am lost again in the parking lot
outside the hospital, searching
for my rental car, no stars,
no bearings, while across the planet
actual birds are falling from the sky.
At night I swim in the hotel pool
and look up past the trees. I have placed
the beach flotsam we gathered
next to the outdoor sink, said farewell
to sponge and seawrack,
and paid up the cottage and thrown away
the food we bought to move across town
into emergency housing. I have called
your children and sorted and shipped
your things and have ridden the elevator
up through the indoor atrium, past
the potted ficus trees and the pianist
playing holiday songs, and held firm
with the nurses and social workers
and moved your tray and adjusted the blinds,
the bed and the television and watched
the TV until it was time to go.
I rode in the ambulance and
crossed the bridge and trembled in
the waiting room and met the doctors.
While they operated I drove out to the shore.
I walked the beach and picked up a shell.
I practiced the slow steps I knew would come
later, after they opened your heart.