Ode to Dr. Ladd’s Black Slit Skirt

Praise to the little girl whose grandmother taught her to embroider,

slip the tip of the needle through the taut cloth and scallop the clouds,

fasten the feathers to bluebird wings.

And praise to the student who gulped muddy coffee

and memorized maps of muscles, puzzle of bones,

slid tendons through their shafts, curling and uncurling

each finger of the corpse like a deft puppeteer.

When I got to the ER Janet lay there, the morphine

not strong enough to blunt the pain.

Her arm looked like a carcass where a lion had fed.

Praise Dr. Ladd pulling green scrubs over her head

and gathering her long hair under a cap.

All the days we drove up to Stanford and waited for hours

in the room with the ugly orange carpet,

thumbing through tarnished pages of National Geographic,

wondering what Dr. Ladd would be wearing,

until we heard the strike of her high heels on the hallway linoleum,

distinctive as the first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth.

Praise her hands that lifted Janet’s hand, her fingertips brushing

the gnarled scars, flesh lumped like redwood burl.

Praise her for getting up early to outline her eyelids,

slick her lips. And praise to her blouses, the silk creamy

as icing on a cake, the generous buttons open

like windows in summer. And praise

her bracelets’ coiled gold and her wide leather belts

encircling her waist like two strong hands about to lift her.

Praise to her earrings, little jangling tambourines,

and her perfume that braced us like a dry martini.

But most of all, praise to her slim black skirt

with the slit up the front so that when she sat down

and crossed her legs, the two panels parted like the Red Sea

and we were seized by the curve of her calves,

the faceted shine of her knees sheathed in sheer black mesh,

a riff of diamonds rippling up her thighs.