"Sewn"

I fell and broke my arm
by the lake
in the first warm sun of the turning.
Somewhere in Chicago,
a newly retired couple have a photograph
of their first bike ride of their new Spring
taken by me
just before I said,
“Hold still and let me move out of the sun.”
After which,
after four feet,
bone met concrete
and newly shattered camera
met newly shattered radius.

With all the technology at hand in hospital,
needle and thread covered
the plate- and- screws- to- bone,
in exactly the same way my mother took a darning egg
and mended our socks----
an unheard-of-thing these days.

A few calendars ago,
when my heart tallied up my quota of vices,
doctors kick-started the mini-chainsaw
and discovered the names of lovers
written on the valve-to-vessel pump.
A nurse with scrubbed hands vigiled my quiet heart
for 96 minutes:
until thread-and-needle time.

[My grandmother sewed clothes for my mom to wear to school that were so well made
no girl or mother laughed,
but jealously sought the pattern,
not knowing it was from the heart.]

Sweet Lillian, Swièty Josephine,
your stitches hold time,
save nine.

Yesterday, a girl dressed in white held my wrist
and pulled the threads out of my arm.
“What a great sewing job!” she said.

Out the window of the medical building
clouds hovered over the lake,
to the east of which my mother, my grandmother,
my father, and seeds of the great whatever,
all lie sewn in the ground,
waiting for the mending time.