Caduceus....God, I Still Love Her Poem by John Tansey

It is always in the Spring and Summer
That I feel the cold most,
But
Sitting in your mother’s backyard,
Sensing the organic sun
On my back;
Its medicinal rays,

I soak up, like a ripening tomato,
Dangling,
From your mother’s garden;
Each one, a quanta of sunlight
On the vine.

Swinging in the loveseat,
Beneath the vineyard
Your mother planted and tended
With years of a sour sweetness
As if she bore it the year
Your sister died.

Drinking water and eating grapes,
Peeled back, so I could pop the pulp
Into my mouth.
Licking our sticky hands,
Our limbs, lax
As shadows, slacken along
The life of the house
Hiding its age.

Suddenly, a chill, as if a crucifix
Has just fallen to the floor.
A chill of the heart, not the air,
Like fall’s first early morning frost.
And I look to the two
Wisteria trees,
Bound by their boughs,
In a way your mother
Must have planned;
So that they would never be alone.

Then I look at you, our arms
Around each other;
Like two birds, their feathers
All in a flutter
Under the quills of a swans wing;
That is how we sleep,
Arms and legs wrapped
As an intertwined caduceus;

Our Hippocratic oath to help heal
Each others wounds.