Host

"...Beautiful, unanswerable questions."
                           ~ Carl Sandburg


Days hiccup, alternate: you wake  
           one day and maybe you think it's 
such an unexceptional day. Or maybe
           it feels indeterminate, like standing
in the musty lobby of a nondescript motel,
           no longer recalling how you got 
there. Maybe it's like the back corridor 
           of the Planned Parenthood clinic,
walls painted chalky gray, when 
           in your late forties, you held a test 
stick in your fingers and watched
           a second evap line turn dark 
pink  in the window. A group of pious 
           protesters stood in tight semicircle 
near the exit, singing hymns, amazing
           something; chanting and chanting
their holier-than-thou.  Did they 
           never feel their bodies 
could play tricks on them—pull out 
           from a hidden shelf a seed 
that thought it might flower like campion
           dug out of the permafrost?  But 
before you could make your return
            appointment, while in the shower  
a glistening knob of tissue unfastened,
            slid out. Loosened whorl, small 
bud you palmed from wet tile:
            how the body recognized
the feel of a suddenly empty room.