Long-Distance
Your wooden leg stood beside the bed
in its tennis shoe & sock, trailing its fasteners,
its amputated man leaning invisibly against the wall.
You pulled back the sheet so I could touch
your stump, the small hole in your left foot.
I touched everything. I was curious. I was eighteen
& ignorant. You told me the little
you thought I could handle.
Thirty years gone since then
to wives, meth, government checks...
Last year they took a kidney
& a few inches more of your right thigh.
Your two sons were fed to a different war
& spit back out. Now
they induct the nervous teenagers of Phoenix
into the intricacies of parallel parking,
the number of feet to trail the car ahead.
You & I are a late-night phone call.
You stretch out beside your drained pool,
shirtless in the heat
with a bottle of Jack, I cradle my California wine.
When your new prosthesis topples
to the cement by the lounge chair
I try to hear
what the fallen man says
as you set him upright.