The Bells of Saint Joseph’s
I lay tethered to four IVs. My heart
did some risky galloping. The ring
I yanked off just before surgery
came back to my blackened finger.
Purple tulips stood in a jar. Eating
was outlawed for five days. I wasn’t
hungry. But I wanted the sky
directly above me, not clouds
through a heavy closed window.
It was lovely to rise and clutch a pole
dangling with fluids. I counted
my staples and bobbing drain bottles.
I walked by myself to the toilet.
My foul bed got changed. Three bells
named Mary, John, and Adalbert
pealed from the tower of Saint Joseph’s.
I was exultant. Snow, my breathing,
the best grape juice ever. A kindly
doctor sat by my bed in his wheelchair
telling stories and watching to see
if I choked. He spoke of Iraq,
ambush, his toe tag affixed,
his body left on a pile of the dead.
He lives. And I have three
wonderfully ugly scars bleeding
only a little and a sky that reaches
over me full of the clangor of bells.
Barbara Daniels is the author of Rose Fever, published by WordTech Press. Her second full-length collection, Talk to the Lioness, is forthcoming from Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press, which previously published her chapbooks Black Sails, Quinn & Marie, and Moon Kitchen. Daniels’ poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and other journals. She received three fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.