“Bath” by Rachel Hadas

By Ernest Hilbert • May 25, 2011 • Poetry

Bath as in water. Here a bath of light,
daylong immersion, glare
shimmering and lapping
through the shutters.
Memory of bath and bath of memory:
I dip in, get out, dry off, resubmerge.
Now that I am far away I see
clearly that your illness is a bath
in which you soak, then presently climb out.
In vain: this bath goes everywhere with you,
portable, inconspicuous,
the inner bath your brain is stewing in,
the bath they tested with the spinal tap.
You do not recognize that you are soaking.
Comfortably you lie back.