Common Creeping Thyme (Serpillum à serpendo)

If only it were just a lousy herb

That issued feeble tendrils slowly, now and then

Relinquishing some tiny blooms, its basest

Essence known to all (good on chicken).

Not a chance. Time tricks and trumps us, ropes us

In; floods and won't be stanched; speeds

Like this anarchic ER's rolling cots that bump

And skate all up and down the too-bright halls,

While you lie in a corner weeping dactyls (AH ha ha)

Until I reach you, grab your hands. If love's

Time's fool, I'm full-on shmuck, lured rushing back

Two state lines on a crappy bus for yet

Another of your episodes: an overdose

Borderline lethal, perhaps; a minor

Conflagration on the kitchen counter;

And now: an alleged inability to write checks,

Dial numbers. A Neuro intern appears,

Leans cotside, condescends to cross

Examine you on dates and names until

You shout at me Get RID of him! But him's

A her, and I admit I've never seen you

Quite like this before. We wait and curse

While aides placate us with stale crackers

And CranGrape juice. I decide to make

You name me every herb you grow so expertly

In pots behind your place. Parse, you offer first;

A man approaches, wagging films. He's terse.

"Shadow—Lung: Pneumonia." What? Sage, you grin;

Another page dispatched post-haste, younger

Than the first. He's clutching your CT:

"Tumors—left brain, three." And then a third,

Too young to grow a beard, steps forth, sucks in

His baby's breath, annunciates: "Metasta—

Rosemary! you holler, Rosemary! as your arthritic hand

Smacks down in triumph on the piled white sheets—

"Sized," he concludes, then speaks slowly to my face.

"It doesn't look good." I turn to you, repeat

The clause. You beam. You've always wanted

A brain tumor, some definitive (read: physical)

Disease people will breathe above a whisper,

Some Bette Davis blight that brings Claude Rains

To your side, or better, your ex-husband from

His wife, and I'd go along with you laughing,

Waving Hi! to all who scurry past;

Laughing, god, so strangely laughing, but now

I know a shape of Time I've only seen

You paint-trumpet, bone, and wing. and I pray

To the fluorescent ceiling: Stay this Creep:

Shut this now, I'll read it later;

Let's fly back inside another spring.

When I am low, just at your hem, knowing

Only that woods don't end and sun

Patters into shade, and we run down

Narrow paths to look for fern and toad

And early flower.

Source: Inflorescence. (Tupelo Press., 2007)