Transporter or holodeck? Either I
have rematerialized incompletely
(sparkling shower of particles
dimmer) or this simulated city
has acquired a wobble, a tell.
Puffy-jacketed people
duck from awning to overhang
along Newbury Street wondering
if swan boats sail in the slanting
drizzle or a hand-held foam-coated
reservoir might suit better. Inside
the Church of the Covenant,
meanwhile, Tiffany glass
somehow glows against cold
puddingstone—how does a yoked
god’s robe luminesce by cloud,
its whiteness alive with ocher
and smoky motion? Gazing
at invisible sparrows, bracing
an overlarge hand on a rock,
he is surely transported too,
that blink of tropical foliage
behind him now, that dreamy blue,
and him thinking how, lord,
did I get to Boston? I drove,
theoretically, via the hospital
where nurses unhooked my mother
from catheter, from I.V.,
and handed her over. Moved
a bed downstairs, stocked her fridge
with little bottles of virtual
food optimistically labeled
Ensure for safety and, for power,
Boost. Counted and sealed
her pills into rows of labeled
oyster shells. Then, north,
as if stillness were heresy.
Back home a library of mountains
I never read. Mosaic rain
I smash right through.
Look at the god, good-looking,
how he looks at the ground,
willing it real, willing himself
to love where he hardly lives,
in his stupid human body,
an always ailing thing. Rather
the sparrow be true than cells
struggling to contain
unlikely radiance, and failing.
Compounding errors. The tumor
an index of poisons, every one
chiming as they transform her.
