Benicia Love Poem: Gestures

Gestures by Robert Eastwood

Her hand covers his, another
confluence on the bed.
The smell of roses & urine intrudes
upon a potpourri of disinfectants.
As dawn arrives through cypress
on the hill, she opens the blind.
An aura, a soft golden dust,
settles on her face,
her bowed shoulders.

Somewhere a buzzer,
unremitting, frantic.
A muddle of voices in the corridor.
Morning rounds & susurrus replies. 

Under the coverlet his knees climb
            some far hill.
A drape of tubes. A moan escapes
            his inner wars, unbeknowns.
She touches the dropper to his lips.
“No more of that. I’ll go to sleep,”
he wants to say, but has lost
            the protocol of words.
Over flat, jade oceans, he fears
            he’s lost his way.

And then she caps the amber bottle.
He sees it as a jewel caught by the sun.
It makes her simple act
            a folio of beauty, a compass,
a beneficence for which he wants to bless her
            in this twilight of gestures.
His eyes, she must believe,
still reach toward her,
his Ithaca for which he rudders.