After Surgery


Like stranded Gulliver I stir, held fast
By moorings, helpless on a foreign shore.
Kind voices flutter by with gentle hands,
That whisper words I know yet can't arrange.

An unseen soul tends the ties that bind me,
As the gardener tends the wayward rose.
She takes her careful turns and turns about,
To lift the weeds and mind this wilted bloom.

The monitor's songbird sings a simple call,
As pain prowls at the borders of my dreams.
One pricking press of the gardener's thorn,
And lovers loom to stand before my eyes!

The mirror’s image returns a ghastly man,
Whose ill-found features grieve my wounded pride.
A kindly woman claims her God will help,
My Faith?—My surgeon holds my faith complete.

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