hospital walls, 3am
(after the pulmonary embolism)
the walls are made of wings rustling inside the white paint
my wife is asleep in a foldout chair in the corner of the room
my body is sunk into pillows facing a dark TV screen –
a black mirror – I watch myself and her
and all the pulsing monitors floating behind us
their lights turn the walls into folds of ocean slabs
what I thought were wings a few minutes ago
might be fins and coral and wrack
I see myself swimming in all of this –
I’m calibrating myself to this new way of breathing –
I sink and surface
sink
surface …
Michael Spring was the author of several poetry collections, among them the bilingual dentro do som/ inside the sound. His awards included the James Tate Prize for Kahlo’s Window, the Turtle Island Poetry Award for Blue Wolf, an Eric Hoffer Book Award for Root of Lightning, and the Robert Graves Award for selections from Mudsong. Other distinctions included a Fishtrap, Inc. writer-in-residency and a Luso-American Fellowship from DISQUIET International. He was a member of the Pedestal Magazine staff for over fifteen years and the founder of Flowstone Press. He lived in Brookings, OR with his wife, Jazmine Blu, and died on October 30, 2024. “hospital walls, 3am” was the last poem he wrote.
