And Isn't It Ironic

(For Carmen, who grew up in Georgia in two rooms off the railway station where her father was station master, who, as a young wife and mother, went off to Arizona, and became a nurse. Who spent the last 25 years of her life in a wheelchair, the last five of them cared for by my son, Laurens.)

Rosemary Daniell

that the very fiery stuff
that was in you when you swerved
off that road in Arizona
to wake in a gully of sand
feeling nothing from the waist down --
the very booze that traveled
your bloodstream    even as you lay
paralyzed for those first moments
that would turn into a lifetime
in a wheelchair    cursing & striking
out with your Helping Hand
or else    for a long time    still
tempting men with the sparkle
of your black eyes.... Oh    for a time   
you tried things to while away
what life you had:    the taxidermy
the contests in which you won beach bags --

making your own beef jerky
in a dehydrator    black men
in the deep South & scandalizing
the neighbors    writing poetry
in truck stops    & always    chaos....
Yes    isn't it ironic that
that very stuff was what you used
up to the end to bear the pain
of what you had done to yourself
with it    leading you now to lie
breathless    a fat nurse whispering
to let go    let Jesus    the poisoned
fluid around your rotting liver
squeezing tight    kidney stones like
quarters passing from your dead
urethra    flesh like beefsteak bleeding
onto the bed sheet    (but    of course
you could feel nothing of that)    in this
white hospital bed    dying at last?