312A has a broken arm though sometimes
it’s her leg. Bed 312B has lost her Kleenex
and given name. The loss leaks out

into the summer grass which doesn’t know
it’s green, under the sun which is slowly
turning to iron. Nevertheless, it’s day.

312A was named for a movie star her mother
loved. Occasionally 312B is her own mother
and sometimes she’s married to a dream

in which she’s fallen from everywhere
and landed in a tree. How
will we ever get down from here?

she asks me. I tell her we’re not in a tree.
I’m a professional liar. I tell her we’ll be fine.
The sun will continue for as long as it can.

Maybe once we were in a tree, but now
we’re just down the hall from flocks
of nurses wearing flowers. We shall not want.

Need not toil. Sometimes I’m her son,
and sometimes her boyfriend in heaven.
Here’s a red button to push and nurses

will fly down from their stations.
It’s fine not to be in a tree anymore.
Look, if I raise the blinds how the grass

minds its own business, low and safe,
exactly the color we need it to be.

Max Garland is the former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin and recently was appointed as Eau Claire’s first “Writer in Residence.” (“Rehabilitation” is published here with the permission of the author.)