Wave Cycles

Inspired by Jane Antonia Cornish’s, “Wave Cycles”, from her album, Constellations (2018) 

 i am weighted by your sadness
 weighed by the wait
 in sorry hospital rooms
 in bars and rhythmic beeps
 they punctuate the silence as we stare
 out green-curtained windows and wonder:
 why so much snow in April?
 snow clinging still to trees
 to stillness in its becoming
 blooming into weight, a pulse
 of wait as red against a darkened screen
 an LED of green, translucent 
 as your skin
  
 and all this waiting
 repeated steps in hallways
 footfalls, silence on linoleum 
 silent stretcher sails past
 and we see ourselves
 as patients, potential waiting to occupy
 that seat, that barely covered bottom
  
 and i am watching, 
 feel your weight on my bones
 in the blood you once transferred to me
 cords never cut on birth days
 only death, only days left,
 weight stares out curtained windows
 stares at frost from your breath
 that threatens
 threatens to fall like showers
 April snow
 falling weightless 
    into waves
 

© Renée M. Sgroi, 2019

First published in The Banister Poetry Anthology, Canadian Authors Association -- Niagara Branch, 2019