Leaving the Hospital
Leaving the Hospital
by Anya Silver
As the doors glide shut behind me,
the world flares back into being—
I exist again, recover myself,
sunlight undimmed by dark panes,
the heat on my arms the earth’s breath.
The wind tongues me to my feet
like a doe licking clean her newborn fawn.
At my back, days measured by vital signs,
my mouth opened and arm extended,
the nighttime cries of a man withered
child-size by cancer, and the bells
of emptied IVs tolling through hallways.
Before me, life—mysterious, ordinary—
holding off pain with its muscular wings.
As I step to the curb, an orange moth
dives into the basket of roses
that lately stood on my sickroom table,
and the petals yield to its persistent
nudge, opening manifold and golden.
Wow. Sincerely: Wow. This poem does a good job of catching the other-worldliness of hospitals, and conveying that feeling once one makes that transition between the two, ans walks out of the hospital. And there are quite a few beautiful images and lines in this one too. So many in fact, it’s hard to pick out my favorites. Well done.
Strong use of imagery. The IVs as bells was very original.
Those IV bells struck me as well, could have used that image in something I wrote recently. Excellent poetry. Loved the vital signs as units for measuring time.