LOVE AS A STRANGER

Charged by emotion
or mental energy,
the idea, object or person
came down the stairs
holding the banister,
watching the crystals break
in my mind
with enforced ignorance.

Love ​as a stranger 
enters your door
in the business of time
​line by line
heart in brain.

Looking for trouble
in the curiosity of age
I get older gently 
hard to wipe the bowl
standing up to pee
often missing
female advantage
that sitting keeps
outer boroughs free
of wet ceramic 
with “b” in bowl 
(not in owl)
in their different sounds 
going up the tree
remembering.

HALF AN ARGUMENT 

At first you might hear a whisper 
its gentle circle closing
on pure rumor
like a bracelet clasp at a wrist
or a necklace made of silver
snapping shut at your neck.

Any further loud sound
half an argument enters 
in more directions 
until suspicious words settle 
in half an angry mouth.

First drawn by dust on city streets
the noise in your head arrives 
with half a book and half your sense 
even if half the circle turns
with strength
and blue or red flowers dry in the sun
nothing matters when night comes.

Recently taught to hold my cane 
near the rear of me
going up a hill 
or pushing it out front 
when going down
hoping
this advice doesn’t cause disaster
from ankle weakness
and more pain;

the noise of such a fall
would be unlike the arguments 
that come together with guests
from every direction
circling both ears
godless.
                     

ALL THIS MORNING 

It didn’t hurt
And didn’t help
The mouthwash
Swishing
Diatomaceous earth
At the fire
Under my tongue
Pretending 
To speak
With my wife
So glad of silence
Writing
Against the rye
Topped with butter
And red jelly
My detective’s mind
Barely visible 
In the cold room
Of bed clothes
Getting better
Minutes later
As if I had 
Commissioned lips 
To speak freely
For my tongue
Cutting it off
From its lexicon 
Of pain 
A little bit older 
Now the same.

MICHAEL SALCMAN: former chairman of neurosurgery, University of Maryland and president of The Contemporary Museum, a child of the Holocaust and a survivor of polio. Poems in Barrow Street, Blue Unicorn, Hopkins Review, Hudson Review, New Letters, Notre Dame Review, Raritan and Smartish Pace. Books include The Clock Made of Confetti (nominated for The Poets’ Prize), The Enemy of Good is Better, Poetry in Medicine, classic and contemporary poems on medicine, A Prague Spring (Sinclair Poetry Prize winner), Shades & Graces (winner Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize), Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems, and Crossing the Tape (2024).