PRAYER TO THE GOD OF MERCY

The full moon, lingering in this congested sky

              is a stethoscope examining the forecast

                            of oxygen passing through the lungs

                                          of the god of mercy.

This moon above Chester County Hospital

              reminds me of the orbit of a smaller moon,

                            the silver sphere the doctor uses to discern

which tempest migrated from the heavens

              and took up residence in my wife’s chest, decimating

                            small towns in the heartland of her lungs.

We wait for the diagnosis, like pilots

              of a weather plane measuring the vitals of the storm,

                            lost in the windpipe off a hurricane.

We wait for a sign — I see each inhale and exhale

              become all the moon phases she has witnessed.

                            Three decades of guardians

keeping vigil over her breath, swirling through

              the joyous wind tunnel of her lungs on nights

                            like these when everything is eclipse and umbra.

When the tornado swept across cornfields a breath

        away from our home. when the inferno at her childhood home

                            filled her lungs with so much smoke.

Even now, when the angel of death walks

              the earth with a virus and a scythe,

                            and asks for the women I love.

Moonlight lives in her chest,

              making a way in the dark, casting halos of light,

                            commanding the world to be angelic.

The small moon rises from behind her back,

              through the concussive thrashing of her coughs,

                            and dense clouds of pneumonia inside her lungs,

and writes us a prescription, which I repeat

              as I keep vigil by her hospital bed

                            Until the god of mercy listens.