Poems by Lou Gallo

MINOR

So here I wait this Friday morning, in my Caravan,
as the anesthesiologist injects tiny needles into my wife
in the auxiliary hospital at my rear, preferring this familiar vehicle
with its trash and odors and decals to the waiting room,
where to my left a man slouched, his skull fused
against the window wall, his lower lip drooping, a festoon of spittle
inching down his chin (dead or comatose, what’s the difference?),
and to my right a young stout mother with two squirming children
twisting in and out of her arms – she’s given up already −
and surrounding us, glass, glass, glass,
shafts of sunlight, trees, bushes, bursting red flowers,
a beauteous place, but grotesque nevertheless,
where people come to get repaired (or die),
where they are taken off by cheerful nurses’ aides
to rooms with forbidding equipment –

and I cannot not think about the anesthesiologist
with his black kit of needles (one slip-up and it's finished)
and who is he anyway who will render my wife unconscious
for a supposedly minor procedure?
What is minor?  The majestic surgeon
will brandish his knife (let’s not call it scalpel,
let’s call spades spades) and proceed with the scraping
and it will all be biopsied in an anonymous lab
in Akron . . . and my wife will awaken
I hope not in New Jerusalem but that forbidding room
and, groggy, she will blink herself conscious
and feel nauseous most of the day, and we’ll
drive home and she will seek out the sofa,
the cat perched sphinx-like on her abdomen,
and I will rush out to fill prescriptions,
pick up the girls, assemble sandwiches, pour drinks,
haul out garbage, wash the dishes
and hope the next visit here will be long in coming
or, better, never . . . because there is too much
at stake, always, each day, each moment,
too much, too much, and nothing is minor,
for the universe is major, every speck of it,
nothing is minor,
not even the black unfamiliar insect
that has lighted on my rear-view mirror,
and which, if I look squarely enough,
becomes part of my own face.

ZEN KOAN ON THE TAO

When I lost the Tao, I found the Tao.
Now, does that make any sense?
Of course it doesn’t.
Of course it does.
So I e-mailed Lao Tzu to clarify
the issue.  He e-mailed back—
Lao Tzu don’t e-mail.
Instantly, I became enlightened.

LA DOLCE VITA

when stranded in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan during the flood
how could I not think of
Heitor Villa-Lobos captured
by cannibals in the dark interior
of his native Brazil? 

Bachianas Brasileiras
had nurtured me through
The Starving Time
and once I kissed
the virtuoso’s concrete bust
outside the Municipal Theater
in Rio.

Now I’m back in Westwego
living la dolce vita—
as I lounge in the lawn chair,
the grandkids leapfrogging
all over the fenced-in yard,
which I must admit seems
way too arid and straw-like.

But the vinyl siding looks
grand—ah, what progress
industry has made with
incorruptible plastic
and Lay-a-Way.

Sometimes, though, when
our turkey buzzard swoops too low
I remember famine, frostbite,
treachery and another kind
of cannibal.  Oh, how I miss
those days on the brink.