Outside the ER fresh snow
flames red/flames white
hoar fire carmine frost
street lights, car lights, ambulance
lights flash red / flash white
Inside a woman walks
her child up and down the hall
holds her to her chest holds
her to her, walks her up and down
The girl is two years old and the blood
trickles down between eye and ear trickles
down among her brown curls,
down her neck — cinnabar on ivory
so pale — as her mother walks
up and down the long
hall where insurance is verified where
those in pain wait for help and the mother
sings softly into that drift of
brown hair through which the warm
blood flows despite the poltice
of ice wrapped in paper towel
she holds against the tiny head
but the mother walks up and down:
walks calmly – this is important —
walks calmly up and down the hall
and as she walks she sings softly
songs of Snow White and her sister
Rose Red, while the warm blood
trickles through brown curls
and down the snowy neck and
because of how she walks
the child does not cry,
though the snow through the window
flames red / flames white
no cinnabar scream
burns a hole in the sky.
