from “The History of Medicine”
Now imagine Vesalius
touching your baby.
He talks a lot about it.
Especially the skull
from which he draws conclusions
about softness
reminds him of rain on Vesuvius,
he writes in his diary
which will not survive.
Rain on Vesuvius before
or after an eruption?
asks a later entry.
While in quarantine Vesalius
writes letters to his past.
The past as best as he and we
can reconstruct it answers
During. Think of smoke
bushes on lava
and ashballs freighted with wet.
Ongoing death by suffocation
steamed by unrocked rock.
No one wants Vesalius
to touch their infant’s head
but he does, over millennia
and miles that aren’t his. Creeper caress
like a Care reacc in sacred time
while in Wisconsin
over fields of unborn corn
five hawks arrive for slaughter.