First Poem After Serious Surgery

The breath continues but the breathing
hurts
Is this the way death wins its way
against all longing
and redemptive thrust from grief?
Head falls
Hands crawl
and pain becomes the only keeper
of my time

I am not held
I do not hold
And touch degenerates into new
agony

I feel
the healing of cut muscle/
broken nerves
as I return to hot and cold
sensations
of a body tortured by the flight
of feeling/normal
registrations of repulsion
or delight

On this meridian of failure or recovery
I move
or stop respectful
of each day
but silent now
and slow

from Kissing God Goodbye (1997)
and from Directed by Desire. The Collected Poems of June Jordan.
Copyright 2005 by the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust