Patient

Patient #18

I saw the car coming,
the type that does
zero to sixty under five seconds.
It was metallic blue, I think.
Screeching, burning rubber
turned the drizzle and oil film into fine mist.

Strangers were pouring over me,
He is going, someone said, no he is not
said another. I kept leaping in and out
of corporal existence
like a dolphin in mid sea.

Muted words, like lichens on wet rocks,
hung on lysol and ether vapour.
I am allergic to lysol smell.
It gives me wheezing.

I stood in the corner of the room
where daffodils and crocuses
grew out of the cracks in the wall.
But, these, I thought, are not tropical flowers.

It is gulmohur time,
like that gnarled, huge tree
seen from the cool upstairs verandah of our home
where my mother first taught me chess.
When playing white, she used to say,
start with pawn king four.

Pity, I do not remember the number
of that metallic blue car.

When their gadgets fell silent, without fuss,
they covered me with an unembroidered white sheet.
It had a mosaic of red, as if someone
had spilled vintage pomerol.

They wheeled out what was left of me.
There was no one to shed a tear.
I guess that would come later
when the matter-of-fact doctor
breaks the news in the waiting room.

They wheeled in patient #19.
What kind of car did he meet
I wondered,
standing near the windowsill,
answering the compelling call
of come-here-to-us ness
of the bright luminescence
of cosmos.

~ Krishna ~
9 July 2001

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