Limbo

My wife and I share a hospital gurney,
trying not to fall off of it,
unable to sleep.  It’s a Friday night

and there are drunks in the ward
all around us, crying out.  Shrieks,
appeals for help, confessions.

This is what limbo must be like.
Dim lights on and off,
phantoms roaming about

in the gloom.  A door swings open
and the black privacy curtains
flap like raven wings. 

We wait and wait
to see my oncologist, wondering
when my time will come.

David Lee Garrison is a retired Wright State University Professor of Spanish and Portuguese. His poetry has been published widely, read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac, and featured by Ted Kooser in his blog, American Life in Poetry. He won the Paul Laurence Dunbar Prize in 2009 and was named Ohio Poet of the Year in 2014. His most recent book is Light in the River (Dos Madres Press).