Bill Holm poems

Advice
Someone dancing inside us
has learned only a few steps:
the "Do-Your-Work" in 4/4 time,
the "What-Do-You-Expect" Waltz.
He hasn't noticed yet the woman
standing away from the lamp.
the one with black eyes
who knows the rumba.
and strange steps in jumpy rhythms
from the mountains of Bulgaria.
If they dance together,
something unexpected will happen;
if they don't, the next world
will be a lot like this one.
Bill Holm



CPR OR No CPR
We bring Aunt Martha to the nursing home.
They weigh her,
barely a hundred pounds,
and we help her lie down for a nap.
She closes her eyes,
and the lines of her frail body
almost vanish in her loose-fitting black dress.
I remember how this woman,
after her husband died,
ran the farm herself,
operating tractors and combines,
digging post holes and stretching barbed wire,
dehorning cattle and castrating pigs.
She cooked, too, and baked bread,
and fixed her daughters' hair.
Everyone knew Martha could do anything.
Now the nurse adjusts the Venetian blinds
and, speaking softly,
tells us we'll have to talk it over with Martha
when she wakes up
and decide which box
to check on her chart--
"No CPR" means that if she ever stops breathing,
they won't try to bring her back.
Standing near her bed, we talk in whispers,
wondering how we'll raise this subject,
when, without opening her eyes,
she speaks in the voice she once used to direct
a crew of men shelling corn or filling silo,
"I'll kill anyone who brings me back."
Leo Dangel: Home from the Field