Heart Attack

Your body startles
with joules,
arched
upwards
in the mid-flow
of electricity
as though

offering gifts
to the gods.
I recognise
nothing
as close
to death
as this,

tubes
issuing life,
the peaks
of the monitor
affirming it.
Voices are loud
but you do not

hear them,
taken to
the bright
light of wisdom
that calls you,
offering
release.

Ten minutes gone and the peaks
level, the scorch
of joules unheeded,
lost into the evening.
Now there is a tag on your right
foot bearing your name,
the sheet gathered

up over your face
like an insult,
your silence now
more ruinous
than your body, wired
and electrified,
going nowhere.

John Cornwall

If you've any comments on his poems, John Cornwall would be pleased to hear from you.