Transplant by Mary McReynolds

News a scalpel, or can be,

to cleave the chest into

two parts, the heart exposed,

valves and veins beating hard,

insistently;

anesthesia unbelief

that what transpired

could not have been

or such a cruel incision make,

deep enough to reach and

shake the organ of this

life (and death).

What surgeon ordered this

recourse, to cut

before the patient

knows with little time

to give consent—then

sews the wound and scar (again)—

infinitude of breaking bad, 

resealing flesh to mortal skin?

But such a surface has to

heal and will it? No.

It throbs with every beating pulse

and will I think until I die.

It does no good to once more try

to make a sense of tragedy.

We come with five: to see and

hear, to smell and taste, and

last, to feel the import of our

life in death and death in life,

what it means to grasp

the real.