Bedside Reading
for St. Mark's Episcopal, Good Friday 1999
In his careful welter of dried leaves and seeds,
soil samples, quartz pebbles, notes-to-myself, letters,
on Dr. Carver’s bedside table
next to his pocket watch,
folded in Aunt Mariah’s Bible:
the Bill of Sale.
Seven hundred dollars
for a thirteen-year-old girl named Mary.
He moves it from passage
to favorite passage.
Fifteen cents
for every day she had lived.
Three hundred fifty dollars
for each son.
No charge
for two stillborn daughters
buried out there with the Carvers’ child.
This new incandescent light makes
his evening’s reading unwaveringly easy,
if he remembers to wipe his spectacles.
He turns to the blossoming story
of Abraham’s dumbstruck luck,
of Isaac’s pure trust in his father’s wisdom.
Seven hundred dollars for all of her future.
He shakes his head.
from “Carver”.
