Judith H. Montgomery: “Consider the Temporal House of the Body”
CONSIDER THE TEMPORAL HOUSE OF THE BODY
for Cate
For two years, week on week, I eased her uneasy body
xxxxxinto my car, clipped the belt, muscled the wheelchair
to the trunk. Drove us to the clinic, where she offered
xxxxxup failing flesh to infusions that might—or might not—
slow the progress of her disease. Still I see her lucid
xxxxxbones, lace against the black plate of the X-ray,
the tactful faces of the RNs readying the dose. She
xxxxxknew the signs—she too a nurse—knew the white
sight of her future as her body turned against itself,
xxxxxpeeling layers of myelin away from spine and nerve.
Once or twice I faltered, let grief or pity shadow
xxxxxmy face. Her quick wicked tongue hauled me back:
The rest of you—she’d point—just temporarily abled.
xxxxxHer verdict echoes across the years and miles as I slip
on ice, splitting a thin wrist that must be pinned. As
xxxxxmy crumbling hip is dug out, replaced by a bright
miracle of metal. Grief. Despair. Worse, what blithe
xxxxxfriends offer stronger at the broken places, none ready
or able to recognize what it is to endure such slow
xxxxxeroding. To know how the proud house of the body—
its intricate beloved latticework of bone, vein, nerve—
xxxxxis programmed to lapse, to dissolve under tide as wave-
lick, as storm-surge and crash speed the humbling
xxxxxof every hard particle, each dear-held carbon bit of being.
Judith H. Montgomery’s poems appear in the Tahoma Literary Review, Bellingham Review, and Healing Muse, among other journals, and in a number of anthologies. Her first collection, Passion, received the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her fourth book. Litany for Wound and Bloom, was a finalist for the Marsh Hawk Prize and appeared in August 2018 from Uttered Chaos Press. Her prize-winning narrative medicine poetry chapbook, Mercy, appeared from Wolf Ridge Press in 2019.