Elegy (Vijay Seshadri)

The ambulance is gone. The squall’s
ragged edge fingers
the fresh green stitchings on the alder trees.
Its belly cracks open and pours

through the timbered swale in back of the house
where, with the lights lit early,
the dangerous hours

of a slowly imploding
spring evening circle
the person left behind to answer the calls.

Friend, you’re in the hands of professionals now—
shaved and scoured,
black life mask strapped to your mouth,

ampules of glycerin, plasma
by the quart, blossoming in the branches
of your temporary yard, your eyes
reflecting the oscillating lines—

and your heart’s plush chambers fibrillate,
in distention darken and swell
three times their size,

swelling in one perpendicular
effort until they
collapse at last.
Friend, it grieves me that you’re breaking

your promise to take me hunting.
This fall, you said, on opening day,
when the alders

are nervous with change,
you’d come to my door and we’d drive
the Upper Bay Road to the blind.