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.