Rising from His Chair

He will not hold the arm rests, so his body

rocks, a windlass, lifting a few inches

off the chair. He falls back, recovers, pulls

in his breath for strength, fixes his eyes on

painting of the Luxembourg Gardens

on the wall where light below the horizon

reaches to hold back the dark. His thighs shake,

each muscle-spindle recruiting strength,

recruiting balance to slowly stand.

He walks, scuffs the carpet. When I offer

a glass of water, he pushes my hand away.

Neither the young nor the old like to be helped.

Steven Luria Ablon, poet and adult and child psychoanalyst, teaches child psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and publishes widely in academic journals. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines such as The Brooklyn Review, Ploughshares, and The Princeton Arts Review. He has published five full collections of poetry including Tornado Weather (Mellen Poetry Press, 1993), Flying Over Tasmania (The Fithian Press, 1997), Blue Damsels (Peter E Randall Publisher, 2005), Night Call (Plain View Press, 2011), and, most recently, Dinner in the Garden (Columbia, South Carolina, 2018).