Julia B. Levine
Septic Shock
Because he’s been working hard to stay alive,
my grandson’s late to take his first steps,
say his first words (dada, hi), his hands
inventing a sideways wave for both bird and fish,
and he’s so happy at home,
but then midnight, his parents race him to the ER,
the intensive care team shooting bolus after bolus
into his arteries shutting down, his mother
beside him, whispering it will be okay in tone
and touch, while the surgeon threads a tube
down his throat, pumps in breath, antibiotics,
sedatives, opiates, and he sways again
without us, between worlds. Five days
in septic shock, his blood poisoned
with infection. We watch his feet twitch,
his small chest lifted by the ventilator,
his spirit floating from one close invisibility
into another, into a nearly unbearable
argument, a but, but stammered to the beginning
we believed was promise, a universal seed.
After visiting hours, I leave the hospital
and a security guard smiles,
or not, everything’s blurred and off-kilter.
A baby is called into this world
and he’s supposed to stay a long time,
isn’t he?
Julia B. Levine’s awards include the Northern California Book Award in Poetry for Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, (LSU press, 2014), a 2024 Pushcart Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry, and an American Academy of Poetry fellowship. Her poems have been widely published, including in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and The Missouri Review. She lives in Davis, California, where she is an emeritus poet laureate.