Poem Approaching Four Past Tenses
Lauren Camp
Later agrees to be
the change of subject.
On Thursday a fever adored him and then
it didn’t, and now it does again.
His soft bit of electric hair. His erasing.
Two days more and fluid
is swimming his lungs. How still we are. Invisible
in the soon or very
soon. The day nurse gets up,
props him up, and up and up
in bed, and hums and nests
a white towel across him. Obedient
oxygen accedes through a tube
as a current and I want him
to sing to me. A riff
from Sinatra, a prayer.
His breathing lands
in even froth, the whoosh and
pecking. I understand it. Or
how long I have been
making a life in his
shadow. First day of spring
and brooches of green. I speak
close and loose, all calm
exits versed beyond
our past knots which still
halve my mind. I make up the difference
of his loyal not
talking. I daughter. I squirm. I
shape words into
harmonics and within each scale
a proverb. I watch his hands gesture. His mouth
doesn’t know questions. Here I am
watching some edge
of being apart to being farther
apart. A hot pink sun
comes in urgent to land.
It’s interesting to me to look through my drafts of this poem that deal with the end of a life, the actual final days or moments. I changed the title four times, looking to recalibrate my thinking. The poem went through a number of other revisions, too, though “past tense” was there from the start. At one point, I got more interested in exploring that term, and discovered there are four past tenses. This gave me a new way to consider a subject so close to my heart.
LAUREN CAMP serves as New Mexico Poet Laureate. She is the author of eight books of poetry.