The Hospital Approaches as a Prescription of Pain

I watch as a sparrow in the field. I watch
the rows of fences marking the miles to the hospital.

She responds: Please go away.
She is right. There is nothing
I can do except watch as a field of sparrows.

The miles of loneliness taste like a radish.
If you blank out the pain, whitewash the screams,
it would not make anything better.

It will get better, I promise. She knows a row of lines
when she sees them, even if it darts over fields as a sparrow.

—Martin Willitts, Jr.