| Red and White* |
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By Patricia A. McGoldrick
All I know is that Paul made me see red
Red, when I didn't want to see any colours at all.
He sent a white letter with a royal blue stamp
And then, he started talking
About white
And Blake
And red
And Burns
And roses in boxes And roses in paper
And roses in June And roses in sick--
Sick ill red cells
White cells--too many
Paul lived only twenty-one springs--too few.
Soon, so many
Needles so sharp
Drugs so strong
Handsome blonde hairs almost gone--
Laughing on Demerol
With skin so tender and white and pale
Arms hugging Paul so dear
Red-blooded leukaemia-stricken male.
Sick, in a red brick hospital
On a cold winter's day
Surrounded by white uniforms and tight white sheets.
In summer,
The colour-coded maze of halls
Are hospital-warm
And...
A phone is ringing
Shrieking a warning in my home--
Paul
is haemorrhaging and
everything seems
red
again.
Through red eyes,
I see parents
At a sombre black funeral
With a white-draped
coffin
resting on green.
I left a
white rose for Paul
And a
red rose for me—
Just like my poet
Wanted it to be.
*Published previously as a winning entry in The Dorothy Shoemaker Literary Awards Contest in The Changing Image under the poet's married name Patricia McGoldrick Goldberg, 1994.
BIO: Patricia A. McGoldrick writes poems, essays and reviews. Recent non-fiction articles published online at http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/2010/02/friday-speak-out-bookmakingfor-you-for.html and "'Now Boards'Give Life to Dreams"; Poems published at Sleet; Irish American Post; Chapter And Verse; Cyclamens and Swords; League of Canadian Poets; Contributions are in www.leafpress.ca/Mondays_Poems_2010/Cold.htm; Frost and Foliage; Voices Israel Anthology 2009; Ice: New Writing on Hockey; Love & Longing in the Near North; The Changing Image, 2008,1994; The Grand Table Anthology. Patricia is a member of The Ontario Poetry Society. WEB: sites.google.com/site/pmpoetwriter BLOGS: pmpoetwriter.blogspot.com; pm27.wordpress.com .
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