I LOOK FOR A STAR THROUGH THE WINDOW
Day One
I look for a star through the window
but there’s none out.
Bad day for me, and great, I went to
the Perth
War Memorial Hospital because I was
walking
like a drunk, though I don’t drink, I
was forgetting
things and the names of people I
shouldn’t have
forgotten. I was having a real
difficult writing cursive script
or even for that matter spelling in
large caps.
I had to cross my name out on a new
book I autographed
and start again. I was inexplicably
embarrassed.
I thought about the farm boys on that
metal plaque,
the lives and women they might have had
before they went off to die, some
expecting
they might, others surprised by the
wreath
of autumn colours in the rain someone
places there now,
soldiers who peopled the First and
Second
and the Korean Wars with their corpses.
I wonder
if the living see into their hearts
now. I thought
I had a muscle strain from too many
crunches.
I saw a pretty girl with sex, style,
danger
mystery and holes in her jeans. She was
reading
a popular novel. My mother always said
I should write a novel. I’ve written
two
and put them in a drawer knowing I’d
done
what my mother told me to. She ought to
know.
She’s read enough of them. But her
son went on
writing poetry. I might have approached
the i
if I were waiting for someone. I’m a
writer too
Love me if you can. I’m intense but
I’m lonely.
And there’s no one here but you. And
the doctors
who blew a large plug of wax out my
right ear.
I still wobbled like a drunk. I
laboured to go straight
in the emergency parking lot
where they let me smoke nine metres
from
the entrance. Maybe that was my last
chance
as I waited hours for an ambulance to
take me
to Smith Falls for a cat scan. The one
driver
young and the world ahead of him, the
other,
older, in love. She’d pick him up at
five.
He’d been hurt by love before but was
hoping
maybe she’s the one, half daring to
believe it.
I was afraid for his sadness, how
fragile
he seemed though he’d been picking up
bodies
for twenty three years. Close to
retirement
but two kids in school he’d work on
to support.
I pissed the iodine for contrast out
into a plastic bottle
he gave me and told me to leave on the
stair
of the ambulance. I got most of it in
the container
despite suffering from vertigo as the
ambulance
moved along back to the Perth Hospital
where
I thought they’d tell me I was ok and
send me home
with a prescription for the four weeks
of migraines cervogenetic like a pain
your neck
but nobody on Google was sure of
themselves
and the connection hadn’t been
empirically made
though a lady at the check out counter
at Giant Tiger
told me when she had migraines she lost
her balance as
I was. Instead I had a tumour on my
brain,
and the doctor, wanting to know where
it came from
had an x-ray taken of my lungs, and
there it was,
another tumour, and tomorrow, if I can
arrange a ride,
thirteen miles, eighty bucks round cab
fare,
another cat scan to see if I’ve got
tumours
in my stomach, indigestibles that grew
faster
than I could eat. I recalled Napoleon
teaching
his army how to march quickly, divide
and conquer.
Is it Elba or St. Helena?Can I ask to
be palaced
like a quarantined emperor in England,
or the Kaiser
chopping wood as if he were doing
something
more useful than horned helmets and
uniforms.
Is it a death sentence I asked the
doctor as he said no
but it’s complicated in your case as
if I wasn’t sure
I was about to leave someone. Later
tonight
I widow-walked a sloppy orbit up
to the Shopper’s Drug Mart on the
highway
to have a prescription filled
immediately.
PMS-Dexamethasone, Tecta, Pantoprazole
Magn.
Short for magnesium? I’ve taken my
first two pills
on a full stomach and I can’t sleep.
Like Baudelaire
who saw sleep all his life as a big
black hole
he was terrified of, then died totally
aphasic.
I saw a pretty girl. The kind I could
perish for.
I looked for a star through the window
but there was none out.
PATRICK WHITE
