(with apologies and nods to bpNichol's
"The Book of Hours" in The Martyrology Book VI)

Briefly, the heart forgets to breathe, forgets
ventricles, extremities and the rest and knows

the technician won't meet the eye
of the storm the three have entered

in the ultrasound room. There's no
sound for what happens while there's blood

pounding through headfuls of the worst
thing that could happen. Or has happened

already. Is that why the outer reception uniforms
shrugged, handing back health cards after

looking up and down, making note of
size? Briefly, the heart simply is

what keeps the room from screaming
or crying or making any noise at all, what

keeps the husband so close to the wife, in fact
he's holding her hand while watching

the screen as if he's seen this movie before
albeit with subtitles and a different director, and

knows it ends abruptly. The technician, who
in another time and place probably

laughs and tucks her grey-streaked hair behind
the apprehension she feels

dating since the divorce, could be hoping
for the best, wishing this time

she'd be wrong and not need the doctor
specializing in this kind of bad news

who's been called not for any obvious reason
but policy, the technician said swallowing

her hair loosened from its hinges
and avalanching the room. To recap, we have

two looking at the silent picture and the third
on her back having swallowed a lake she now prays

will engulf her before the next word, engulf
the way amoebas would in cell biology class long ago when

she never paid enough attention and can't help
wondering if that miscarriage of her studies is

why this is happening, why
the heart's no longer talking to her

or her husband or the hospital staff and why
she's thirsty as if in deserted sand and more aware of

vultures and what they do. The heart is
the clock on the wall clicking institutionally and barren

when the doctor arrives and he too cannot
make eye contact. In this script

the actors deliver their lines to the side-
long glance the audience gives or to others like

the woman across in the waiting-room chair before all this
whose arms slid out of her sleeves like charms

not fastened securely to the bracelet
so skinny that drug marks were not

out of the question and yet she was big as a house
with at least one child. Briefly, the heart

gets up blighted from the examining
and makes its way to the adjoined washroom, it seems

this hospital thought of everything, you don't even
have to go back out and face

right away, the technician said after Doctor fled,
Take your time. Your time. You roll it over

like a Lifesaver, the orange one your grandfather
unwrapped you as a kid. Your time

was supposed to be this time, you thought, shaking
head and heart, unable to separate

breaths and sobs, milk and cream, and you think
where is that awful sound coming from, someone

help her. Green shoes
under the sink in the discreet washroom

needle their way into the heart to stabilize after
having restarted the cycle of in and out

and in and out and pretty soon compassion
is what the wife pulls on

towards whoever owns the shoes and was mindful to
leave them where a heart might have

held its breath or stuck its head underwater
too long. It's a long way walking back

where mercifully the film was turned off ---
not much to see anyway, the doctor had said

running away. So now the husband is against
the wall, leaning or holding up, it

can't be discerned from this distance
though there's dampness. So the heart mulls over

the ways in which yellow means caution and so
must ask what were they thinking when painting

this room and thank god for green which under
the circumstances would mean go on.