I’d be going crazy if I was still living in some of those places
Like when I was an urban cliff dweller
Looking out at a forest of concrete and glass
Seeing forty thousand pairs of eyes looking back
Makes one a little squirrelly at the best of times
Let alone a few weeks before open heart surgery
Trying to wrap my head around that thought
So I appreciate my forest oasis at city’s edge
A small piece of ancient landscape left untouched
Where my feet can connect directly to bedrock
Resonating on a time scale of profundity
Where I can look out above treetops to the sky
Where I can consider the future from a far-seeing place
I play with alternate versions of the Chac Mool moment I’m on course for
A Stoic exercise of negative visualization
Asking what’s the worst that can happen
Then imagining how that would play out
In order to prepare a strategy of positivity
It’s strange since I don’t have any symptoms
I don’t feel sick
Quite the contrary, I feel better than I have for years
But I’m told a valve needs replacing
It’s a wonderful thing to be alive today, I think
In this world where medicine has become clairvoyant
Where heart valves can be manufactured and installed
Without missing a beat
Now I have a medical team
I am conveyed from one appointment to the next
Relentlessly lining up for ultrasounds and angiograms
Until the moment my chest will be opened and my heart repaired
My sternum will be wired back together
I’ll be stapled shut
There will be no heart attack in six months or a year
The only murmur I’ll hear will be the whisper of the sea
And the wind in the trees
Singing heart songs that I will listen to
With gratitude
David Trudel © 2013
Bombs
Walking through a crowd one day
Being told the next
That there could have been major carnage
Is unsettling
Even if the pressure cooker bombs were inert
The intent was there
My aortic valve is another pressure cooker
Ready to explode
But it’s under surveillance too
So I smile as my blood is drawn
Enjoy a short wait in Medical Imaging before a chest X-Ray
I am not terrorized by failed plots
From without or within
I don’t believe in might have beens
Or populate alternative realities with fear and trepidation
I have enough trust left to appreciate policing
That forestalls bombs and heart attacks
Leaving me walking this path only a little shook up
By potential devastation
Defused
David Trudel © 2013
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Filed under Cardiology, Poetry
Tagged as aortic stenosis, blank verse, bomb plots, bomb scare, creative writing, creativity, free verse, heart attacks, metaphor, poetry, social commentary, terror