The alarm clock rings all afire with notification. No time to stretch and lounge in bed. No time to observe morning’s light passage through open blinds. No time to hear the call of frisky birds. Just enough time to limp into the kitchen and start the coffee before a prolonged hot shower. All the while, nerves flare like hot prongs in an alloy plant. Too many days of waking this way makes one weary.

brittle tree on fire
cold morning singsong
hot water on bark

Avascular necrosis of the hip destroys mood and motion. A degeneration of the joint, hardly understood, causes the friction of bone grinding on bone. Nighttime whisky and a toke of pot hardly mask the pain but induce oblivion. Sitting alone, stoned in front of the television set, one might take rest.

snow blind and mute
the leaf pile slowly decays
end to another day

I follow ceiling tiles and fluorescent light fixtures as I am pushed, flat on my back, through the halls of a mid-century hospital. The occasional glimpse of an orderly’s torso in blue scrubs comes into view. Doctors and nurses run alongside in heed of the distorted public address system. Wheels squeak on linoleum resonating the gurney’s bumpy roll against my spine. The journey ends with a whoosh as sliding doors open into the operating room. Walls are white and the room is cold. A thin tube needled into my wrist brings an injection of serenity with a warm and fuzzy countdown to darkness. Dreamless sleep.

blue midsummer morn
chirping birds guide to ether
patient minds the call

Jerry Garcia

is a poet, photographer, and filmmaker from Los Angeles, California who is too old to have been named after The Grateful Dead guitar hero. He has been a producer and editor of television commercials, documentaries, and motion picture previews. His poetry has been seen in Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, Chaparral, Chiron Review, Askew, Palabra, Verdad Magazine, KCET’s Departures: Poetry L.A. Style, and his chapbook Hitchhiking with the Guilty. Jerry is a past director of the Valley Contemporary Poets and former president of Beyond Baroque’s Board of Trustees.

www.gratefulnotdead.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Poems, Essays, Print Journals & Chapbooks, a resource list at the author’s website to his work on the web

⚡ Jerry Garcia at Edgar Allen Poet, with links to poems and interviews