Lost and Found

What’s the difference between magic,

coincidence, and God? I was afraid

my father would die on the same day

his mother was born, and also the baby

due in California, his great grandson.

It was a day of waiting rooms, families

sprawled on squarish chairs wearing

masks and checking their cellphones.

My father lived, and the baby was born

in the wee hours of the next day, just

minutes into the next day, and his name

(the middle name, Bloom) honors

his sister, who would have been four,

but lived for only a day, cradled in arms.

We have a little free library for her,

attached to a tree in our front yard.

Neighbors take books and leave books.

It’s always half-stocked with children’s

books for Iris, who lived and died

so briefly. The iris spears are starting

up here in March. It’s gone rainy again.

The daffodils are coming on, the day

lilies. A neighbor emailed to say

she was gripped by a memoir

from the little free library, had I

read it? No, someone else put it there.

My father somehow sliced open

his own ankle with his fingernail

and had twelve stitches moments

before the operation on his heart.

His heart was tight. The doctor said

they had to balloon it open to get

the wires in, the new device. By “it”

I mean the path to the heart,

and here’s the coincidence of metaphor

beside the other near coincidences.

The surgeon chose against ablation,

a relief, and maybe Grandma Helen

was looking over it all in the white light,

making sure the balloon didn’t pop.

The poetry prompt for the day

was “memorial.” This is a riddle

with no punchline, and the line breaks

are erratic; the poem doesn’t know

what it is, or what it wants to do.

But my dad got to order macaroni

and cheese from the low-salt menu

at the hospital, and his voice came back

strong and deep, something he had lost.

— Babs