During the heart attack,
the young man became younger,

doctors’ urgent voices hushed,
a strange lullaby of beeps and hums

soothing the room, which was really just
the inside walls of his mother as,

a fetus now, he summersaulted through
before and after in the amniotic space

of forever—or as close as memory comes
to shadows and light swelling

past that room of steel and machines
into some other space of life-ever-after,

this small opaque tadpole twirling, then
suddenly reversing and rising

through seconds, moments, weeks,
months, swirling air bubbles filled with years

all ascending to a solitary nurse calling, Stay
with us. Stay.

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Marjorie Maddox is the host for WPSU-FM’s Poetry Moment, assistant editor of Presence, and Professor Emerita of English at Commonwealth University. She has published 17 collections of poetry, including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? (Kelsay) and Seeing Things (Wildhouse), as well as the ekphrastic collaborations Small Earthly Space and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind. Maddox also has published a story collection, four children’s books, and the anthologies Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and Keystone Poetry (co-editor w/Jerry Wemple, PSU Press). More at: www.marjoriemaddox.com.

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