Bone Scan
By: George Burns
Driving into the low morning sun,
I cannot see, so drive slow and on hope.
Like the sun, the traffic on Sunset,
Temescal, PCH and the 10 is just beginning
and it’s easy to go with the flow and,
in the garage, I have my choice of parking places
and even have time to finish listening
to the podcast, there is a great ambiguity
at the end of the world, which I’m mis-r
emembering, but not in a huge way.
It’s close to 8 o’clock and the approaching hour
is drawing more and more cars in, filling the still
abundant slots and ahead of me, is a woman
almost running to beat the last few minutes to her desk.
But I’m an old man. I no longer need to run,
so when I extend my wrist to the receptionist
to snap on the hospital band, I joke, It’s
like we’re getting married and I think
her laugh is real: Now that I’m old,
it’s more relaxed around women.
Why did this take so long, I wonder
as I pull my keys, wallet and cell
out of my pocket then unwind my belt
from around my waist. Finally lie
on the scanning table for the plate to
meander in its track above me,
gazing at my body, feeding on my bones.
That’s it, she says and I’m surprised
it’s happened so fast as I sit up
and feel a small cloud of vertigo
descend on my brain. That’s it,
the nurse says and cuts my wrist band.
The world has begun to hum in my absence
and the freeway and its on-ramp are full
but moving; the sun is higher and
no longer a problem and I begin to
hum a zippety do-daw. The world
still has a place for me. Crowded,
but if I turn on my signal,
I can still squeeze in.
George Burns was the owner of a small company in the semiconductor industry until he retired in 2008. He has been writing short stories and poetry for more than forty years.
His short stories and poems have appeared many literary magazines, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Duality Journal, One Sentence Poems, Passengers Journal, Verse Daily, Right Hand Point-ing, The Comstock Review, The DMQ Review and The Massachusetts Review.
In 2004, his poem, “Partly Heliotropic”, was the winner of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation Poetry Contest. “Like One Bird Wing” was a Poem of Special Merit in Comstock Review’s 2021 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Contest. His first book of poems, If a Fish, was recently published by Cathexis Northwest Press.