We’d Been Drinking Champagne When I Found It

Like a man clearing the table
      with his backhand, this lightning.
        This is the rotation of concern, weatherman says,
 pointing to a milky swirl
before the box goes black. Attack.
      Good line for a pantoum, I think.

      You add vinegar to the boiling water
      to poach eggs, then swirl a churning well,
   crack the egg in quick
so it cooks tight.
        This is the rotation of—

     We are poached in this black box, outside
the black night boils,
     cracks. What separates—X
      of masking tape on the windows. Hurricane
                         proof.
This is a warning from your Emergency Broadcast—
                           Lightning
                     makes glass
               when it strikes sand.  Lightning
      strikes twice, at times.

      When poaching, you don’t want legs
of egg, sloppy strings. That’s why you carve
                 a well into the water—

               On Monday the doctor will X-ray,
say the fibrous lump I found some hours ago
    on my breast (Left mass, Twelve o’clock, he’ll note on the bill)
      is but a cyst.
               Cross my heart. As yet,
                              I don’t know this,
                or anything, much.

    This is the rotation of
    This is the rotation of
    This is the rotation of concern. Hey hey.

The Doom Pantoum.
               This is a warning from—

     Before the storm,
we’d been dining on the deck.
                 Champagne, why not.
           (We thought like that, then.)
 Champagne for all my real friends, and real pain for all my sham ones,
my Irish grandmother used to say.
                (Died of cancer. Breast.)

            How this all started—do you remember—
     your watch beeped the hour, and a lightning bug fell
into my well
   of champagne. Hey.