Appendectomy

I am awakened by a phone call
from you who tells me not to worry
and that everything is fine

so I worry and know that everything
is not fine which sends my heart galloping
like a horse turned wild by gunshots

impossible to soothe but I force my ears
to receive your words which say you are
in an emergency room for acute abdominal pain

so thirsty as they are I tell the hydrangeas
they will have to wait. They will forgive me
when I describe the loneliness of human agony

and the analeptic capabilities of touch,
but I will not forgive me
so I calculate three shirts and two pairs of pants

based on average recovery times for this procedure
then board a train that carries me
through moonlit towns and lamplit cities to you

in a hospital where doctors work laparoscopic wonders
to remove gratuitous anatomical matter,
errata in an epic chronicle of body.

Now you are in that state when anesthesia wanes
and analgesia waxes, leaving your consciousness
untidy and prone to poppycock.