Dark Ages

Once, he had brain fever; I stayed

           at the hospital all night. All night

he wanted water, wanted

to pour the glass himself, and though

           his hands unsteadily flapped

I kept handing over

the plastic pitcher. I had no answer

           when the night nurse hissed, Why

do you keep letting him?

her third time out the door, arms

           loaded with soaked sheets.

I have no answer now,

only a sharpened sense

           that neither of us matters

to the future, the way

the monk whose breath

           blown through a hollow reed

sealed gold leaf to gesso

on a page of the Book of Kells

           has otherwise left no trace.

He could not read the words

is one illuminated page? Then

           see the cup, the straw; the glaze

of water on the swinging table

arm becomes a lapis lazuli

           Celtic spiral. See the nurse

—a lion—who stalks

the margins (she’s tinted

           vermilion) of a psalm you know

by heart, the one in which your cup runs over.