Dead Spot

Six miles daily, half run, half walk.
Podcast-miles fill my ears — personal
change and poetry, then the four-way
at Highland and Catawba, where
Bluetooth lives vanish — the way an
overheated sun suddenly ducks
below world’s edge on August 28th.

A dead spot,

that pulls up my ghosts like fog fingers
gleaning at 7:46 on a late summer morning,
they double tap the dead spot in my heart,
left by a Dad who provisioned nothing
but a name. This discomfort, variable
and diffuse, possible necrotic tissue —
maybe ventricle, maybe left atrium,
can’t really tell.

Four times, endurance and the endless
sugar of magnolia blossoms helped
me bypass the township sign Sadness,
Population 72,873,628.

My daughters, neuroscientist, and
surgical vet, palpate no dead
tissue, insisting the CAT-scan
fuzz-ball is an artifact.

Still, I see the township sign shimming
just above hot blacktop, maybe there,
maybe not.

Gary D. Grossman
Verse-Virtual, September 2023