CT Scan Assay

          Load every rift with ore.
               —John Keats

First, there is a body
then its soft parts.
From above a voice
says breathe, now
hold. Now
let go. No good
god would speak
such a thing.
She would say nothing
to be seen here
as the machine turns
its sensor, detects
tissue invisible
unless a tumor,
a mass attached
to the barium-lined,
the X-ray lit.

Now is the time
to look into darkness,
examine oneself
for impurities and for how
much must be smelted
from every last moment,
from each line
from the deep rift left
between now and when
I end, no matter what
the person with the loupe
sees examining
the ore of me,
determines
the denominator
of my days
remaining.

*

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared or are upcoming in Whale Road Review, Tony Seed, Gyroscope Review, Minyan, Rattle, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, and Cutthroat. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig. More at www.dickwestheimer.com