From this year’s experiment. This is the first 3:15 poem I’ve ever written from a hospital room. I had to take my husband in one night. (He’s fine, btw. He had a nasty virus.)
Aug 4, 2010
Vancouver General Hospital
Vancouver, BC
the moon is red
like a sci-fi planet
surreal in the night
out the emergency taxi window
three cats to the wind
then all windows vanish and replace
themselves w/white hum
disembodied voices test for cures
charts mark the anaesthetic blocks
to your hands and feet
you’re the patient under the sheet
you have a fever of 101˚
you ask if you are dead
not yet
on the TV a man kills
8 in Connecticut but you
are safe for one more red moon
rise more red blood sun
the plasma rays reach out
touch earth skin
heat it like your neck
fevered and quiet
except for the occasional
moan what’s the occasion?
lying in a hospital bed
the familiar feeling of
a body breaking down
its limits
cosmic and uncertain
ok logistical question first–were you asleep there and then you set an alarm and woke up to write? or were you still awake at 315?
I love all the recurring red images and the moon and the last line.
I was 1/2 awake. lol. I had dozed off, but happened to wake up just before 3:15. I mean, how well can one sleep sitting in a plastic chair?
The moon was so incredibly red that night it was surreal and almost frightening. It had to do with those plasma flares from the sun in early aug.
Thannks for sharing Danika. Hope you had a wonderful time at 3:15 this year.
A red moon:-) I’d love to see one sometime, even if its frightening
I did! There were a few years I felt the experiment losing juice for me, but now it’s picked up again. Perhaps all the facebook participants helped.
I have to say the red moon was amazing (although when riding in a taxi to the hospital, it’s a bit ominous). I wish I could have taken a photo of it.