WEBVTT

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He makes a house call.

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Six, seven years ago, when you began to begin to faint,

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I painted your leg with iodine, threaded the artery

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with the needle and then the tube,

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pumped your heart with dye enough to see the valve almost

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closed with stone.

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We were both under pressure.

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Today, in your garden, kneeling under the sticky fig tree

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for tomatoes, I keep remembering your blood.

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Seven it was.

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I was just beginning to learn the heart inside out.

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Afterward, your surgery and the precise valve

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of steel and plastic that still pops and clicks

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inside like a ping pong ball.

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I should try chewing tobacco sometime,

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if only to see how it tastes.

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There's a trace of it at the corner of your leathery smile

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that insists I see inside the house.

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Someone named Bill I'm supposed to know.

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The royal plastic soldier whose body fills with whiskey

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and marches on a music box.

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How dry I am.

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The illuminated 3D Christ who turns

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into Mary from different angles.

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The watery basement, the pills you take,

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the ivy that may grow around the ceiling if it must.

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Here, you are in charge of figs, beans, tomatoes, life.

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At the hospital a thousand times,

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I have heard your heart valve open, close.

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I know how clumsy it is.

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But health is whatever works and for as long.

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I keep thinking of seven years without a faint on my way

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to the car loaded with vegetables.

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I keep thinking of seven years ago

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when you bled in my hands like a saint.