Wherever the nurse touches you
more gauze is needed
though the shoreline stretches out

the way your blood here to there
drifts off course, not remembering
why the sea motions not to move

let your arm float on the few drops
still beating—you are wrapped
in salt, close to being buried

absorbed by a sharp rock
and what feels like rain
is the handful that has taken so long.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, including free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

Feature image by Winston Chmielinski, Los Angeles