The doctor on the sled that brought him then,
practicing on the reins
and horse’s rump
when they used to do this,
did this: elevatored flat palms downward
to sticky skin
in the bottom floor flat.
They called it the laying on of hands.
Bloodletting, too, the cure and cause of pale
and wan,
a word so faint it faded.
In the frostbit ambidextrian digital world
it would be the clinging collection of fingers
applied in an older fashion,
one or many,
not really a connection
and uncertain about how it feels.
They presumed it could be touched,
that some thing under mantle, at the core,
unwinding;
the black, squishy, white, round, hard, red, blue
perception,
bug, lump or vapor
working to the surface,
needing hands—
quick ones,
sometimes in a peak.
Fleet, too, is a word no longer of use.
There is no escape in it
though the horses be strong
and prayers like tendrils
weave up the poles.
Always there is something that grabs,
with carousel reach,
at the rider
not the ring.
This morning when I fell sweating in a tangle of
sheets
wound round and around my feet;
when sleep that had served me well
turned on me,
to keep breathing I reached down to the floor
and pushed,
ratcheted me up with my own two arms.
Anything like a wafer,
net,
a comforting cloth or pat
stayed down.
