Waiting

(after viewing Mimmo Paladino's

“Tre Comete” – “Three Comets” –

at the Frist Center for the Arts,

Nashville, 3/24/02)

 

 

The humpbacked

man is becoming

an angel. Those

wings may

take eons

 

We can wait.

 

One figure has

its head in its

chest, its hand

strangely female.

The hand too

will be a wing.

 

On

a plate

at eye level:

 

a hand as big as yours,

foot,

crude wooden spoon,

mask,

head of an arrow,

woman's shape,

circle with an X,

eyebrow.

 

This is who

you are, the painting

says.

 

At the top

of the canvas,

a white streak,

and a bull's head

that you then see

is, with the white

streak, a snake,

or your face

traveling at the speed

of light, as your

cells do,

 

here where

nothing

is put together yet,

much less peaceful.

 

 

© Elizabeth Oakes

 

 

 

                                                         Fractals of Life and Death

 

    (for the anesthesiologist, Medical Center,

   Bowling Green, KY, 13 May 1980)

 

 

This is a story about

giving birth

and dying

in that order and the other.

 

I was cold, bleeding – the thing

that caused those rows

of tombstones in old cemeteries.

 

The man behind me cupped

my face in his hands.

You're going to live,

the hands said,

though he said nothing.

 

I breathed in the nothingness,

and then I went into the light.

I heard the music of the spheres,

I told the doctors, before I

learned not to tell anyone.

 

There was bliss, and I

didn't want to come back until

I did. Later near death

experiences would be the stuff

of talk shows and The Simpsons,

but this was years ago.

 

I woke up, saying, “I'm going to live.

I'll get to see my children grow up.”

And I did.

This daughter is grown now.

 

You're going to live, the hands said.

And I did

And I am.

 

 

© Elizabeth Oakes