Writing At That Time When You Were Sick...Or Dying Poem by RIC BASTASA

when you write
when you are sick and having fever throughout the night
there is no one beside you
there is no electricity, and there is a storm raging on your roof
the house is shaking

you feel that in a short while this house will be blown away
and you just do not know what happens in mid-air

when you write these lines
you hear voices asking for help as though they are buried by the waves
twirled and taken to the bottom of that deep and dark ocean
some bodies
of children and women
some still holding each others' hands
lay dead beside the black corrals and the sea porcupines and urchins

finally, you are carried by this horror
your body shakes in terror like the house shaking its beams and walls in mid-air
you give up the pen
let go off the paper
you give up that consciousness

what you have and what you are now
is air,
strangled like a throat
all breaths finally
sucked
in a vacuum