Joanna Gilman Hyde

I saw The Last of Eva

In Her Strict Blue Eyes

Sitting up to get up

And out

Of a secondary hospital

Where is my brother now?

He is in my right eye

The corner of which

I rub occasionally

With my right index finger

As He so often

demonstrated

Eye Gladly Wear Real Mink

From a dead mother in law

But today I bought

A fake spruce —

Bush from a box

With tiny silver lights

Tied at the top

To be unfurled

With the eternal hope

Of a birthday visit

From my living son

For Valentine’s Day

Eye wanted a gown

The colour of poinsettia —

My first husband’s response

To my request:

“Whadda ya want that For?”

The sky is the colour of salmon

The horizon is streaked with gold

Filaments of autumn

Laid out straight —

My rising to behold

Early light laced through

The neighbour’s tree through the clouds

The sun as Eye write

One Night on the NY State Thruway

Eye drove with a silver haired

CBC executive

On into the night

And he said to me

Alone as we were:

“Ahh to keep driving

On into the night”

How many beds have I made

For Dr Blair

But not for my self?

I have the bed in my grafitti-ed room

And have had no one in it

But cats —

Here I am

Again in a place

Of less than domesticity

And I have spread

A laundered quilt

Across a bed

Of complicity

I saw a dog

In a doorless doorway

Crouched across with his paws

Dangling

Above

A stairless step