Seventeenth Day in Rehab
I sit gazing at the still or shifting leaves
and crisscrossing branches, the clouds, the sun,
the shadows that soften toward evening.
Then, a sudden downpour. Rain-slicked,
the crape myrtle glistens ocher, olive,
against a pewter sky. Water drips from the leaves,
long curls of bark peel from the trunk—
the shifting light, the sudden weather,
yet the day seems never to change, waiting
to heal, waiting for bone to grow around
the screws that hold my broken hip in place—
trying to sleep, trying to shit, trying to eat,
gazing hours and hours at the tree,
knowing, though I come to the end of pain,
I will return to it again.
Ann Fisher-Wirth is Mississippi Poet Laureate for 2025-2029. Her ninth book, For What Is, Praise: New and Selected Poems, is forthcoming in the Silver Concho Poetry Series from Press 53. Read more.