A CROWD INSIDE

The language of chance is the flipping

of cards.

For billions of years—snap, snap, snap.

Such loneliness.

You feel a crowd inside you, and they

carry torches.

In a room, on a table,

the doctor is serious with his stethoscope.

Take a deep breath.

Another.

You’re not wrong.  He hears

the multitudes in the tall grass,

chanting.

Nancy Botkin is the author of Parts That Were Once Whole (Mayapple Press 2007) and In Waves (March Street Press 2009). She has a chapbook forthcoming in September 2011 from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry East, Laurel Review, Eclipse, South Dakota Review, and many others. Botkin teaches at Indiana University South Bend.