July 12, 2015In Praise of Jonathan Matthew
God bless Jonathan Matthew, asleep
on the table, a piece of his liver plucked
out and planted in the jaundiced boy
from up the road, for Jonathan Matthew’s
weak thumbs-up, his face swollen, his wife
falling all over him lit by the kind of love
I don’t know yet, for the way the liver regrows,
in him and in the boy, to full-size within weeks,
like an ancient memory of starfish inside us,
for the pink cheeks on the boy from up the road,
just days later, who sits next to Jonathan Matthew
under a tree, the boy in a hospital gown and gloves,
Jonathan Matthew already in his work-clothes,
ready to respond to our heart attacks and house
fires when the siren warns the village,
our own Prometheus defying the gods.
from Poets Respond