Floyd Skloot

PAUL KLEE AT SIXTY*

Slowly the stillness comes upon his hand.
As he watches, color bleeds from the tip
of his brush, leaving him only a thick
black line. He has dreamt it time and again
but this is no dream. He knows he is sick
beyond all imagining now. A land
of loss looms, and is the place he must walk
this tired line, which thins as it wavers
toward the vanishing point. He cannot rest.
As his skin shrinks, as his muscles soften,
what he most wants to bring to life is death
as it looks to him here, pure fire often
blazing in the coldest place. He savors
it as he waits for movement to begin.

* * *

TERMINAL CONDITION

He feels his battle is not with cancer
or chemo but with health insurance claims.
There seems no way to get a straight answer
in time. It is like reading Henry James,

sentences turning upon themselves, all
delay and denial, leading nowhere
he has the time to go. Another call,
another hour on hold. This is health care

in America, a system as sick
as his own, devoured by growth gone wild,
destroying what it is meant to sustain.
Now a new voice is trying to explain
the problem with treatment codes in his file
as, on the desk nearby, an old clock ticks.

* * *

LAST WINTER

An innocent cough, vague pain in the joints
when he plays simple chords, muted rashes
across his torso, sudden sundown flashes
of fever. His dreams know. Everything points
to relapse though he thought there would be
more time, though his doctors said the signs
were all good. Now and then there are times
when he can still dissemble, when the tree
outside his window suddenly resumes its shape
against the backdrop of his neighbor's fence,
when the light lingers long enough to convince
him winter has lost its way. When he can escape
what he feels happening in his body's core
where nothing like it had reached before.

"Last Winter" and "Terminal Condition" were previously published in The Hopkins Review and "Paul Klee at Sixty" in The Sewanee Review .

Floyd Skloot's most recent books are the poetry collection The Snow's Music (LSU Press, 2008), the memoir The Wink of a Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life (U of Nebraska Press, 2008/2011), and the short story collection Cream of Kohlrabi (Tupelo Press, 2011). He has won three Pushcart Prizes and his work has been included in, Best American Science Writing, Best Spiritual Writing, The Best American Essays, and Best Food Writing anthologies twice each.