In this bag
is everything I want to say to you,
how tired your face looks at 2 a.m.
ghostlike and despairing of sleep,
your pained footsteps creaking
down the hallway to watch TV.
We’ve seen three doctors in as many days
and in this bag are Vicodin, x-rays, pills
for a pair of shoulders in the vise of old age.
We are on the downslope, a toboggan
of aches, twinges, which we steer
straight towards the brook that is halfway
between water and ice, earth and heaven.
Donna Pucciani has published over three hundred poems in the U.S. and U.K., including such journals as Hawaii Pacific Review, International Poetry Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Mid-America Poetry Review, JAMA, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. She has won awards from the Illinois Arts Council, Chicago Poets and Patrons, and the Illinois State Poetry Society, among others. Donna’s chapbook of nature poems, The Other Side of Thunder (Flarestack Publishing, 2006), was released in Britain followed by a full-length collection in the U.S., Jumping Off the Train (Windstorm Creatives, 2007). A third book of poems, Chasing the Saints, is forthcoming in January 2008.