Open Heart

Like the first black note

that makes the key go minor

the blackbird sags the phone wire

down to the fret called fear.

So the dip in his voice

is the bird's fault, I decide,

and nothing it hears in our long-distance talk

makes its reptilian eyes turn inward

though they do

turn inward like his voice, the hush

a surgeon left behind in him

last time in that room

where what blurs the I and thou

is candied ether-air.

Now, his voice blurs;

his body's canals

are once again too trafficked-

Gondolas, gondolas, nowhere to go... .

Last time, he had a pole.

Last time, when the soul assigned to him

had fallen asleep in the boat

gazing up at white lab coats, thinking

Cumulus, cumulus, nice day for drifting

on out of this world,

he lay down the pole,

just dropped it in the water.

When they fished it to the surface

it stayed there,

a long red scar,

as though the sun were always setting

on the center of his body

just above the timberline of fine red hairs.

The first time I touched there I thought

here is the pull-chain,

and here is the light they screwed into his heart... .

But I did not pull

the way, now, the wire pulls

at the distance between us

as if we were speaking

through a tightrope of string

between paper cups:

thimble-sized cups

the nurse brings the pills in,

thimble of water she metes out for the washing-down.

These are the dishes

we're given in the afterlife

when we have shrunk back to the size of dolls

to make room for one another.

The scar, it seems, has risen

to make room for another scar-

the phone wire resembles it, it

transfers the vein of his voice to my ear.

Meanwhile, the blackbird

listens with its black heart.

It weights down the wire so one of us can clear

that hurdle to the bluer air,