Red Shift

Better.  Back home.  Optimism flickers

on and off like a neon sign, like belief itself.

The young Thai surgeon in Phitsanulok with

good English and better bedside manner

draws an atomically correct picture of

my gut and says you have a stricture

right there, then puts his hands on

my tummy at the spot.  It’s an odd

feeling.  He wants to get at my belly.

I will call him Dr. Scissorhands.

Depression walks hand-in-hand with

illness, but it also is the secret sharer

of optimism as well. I am better but

depressed for everywhere I look I am

indebted to others.

Look far out into space to the Pillars

of Creation and toward them I am

a red dot, a deepening red-shift of shame

for not having enough money, for not

being able to take care of myself.

I gain speed every second, moving away.

In forty years or so I may pass out of

the solar system leaving everything.

This is the new me.  I hear myself say,

“deal with it.”  I’ve lost so much weight

I hardly recognize my voice.

Surrounded by the blackness of deep space,

the new me thinks over and over

OK, but how?

FG           3/24/2016