Intensive Care

No heroic measures, she said,
partly lying.

Like bannered knights
in stainless steel they
prance, scalpels, forceps like
sharp hooves sparking from tile
cobblestones, or
rattling old bones; though lions
roar lightning, against darkening skies,
and turn on them
permanent, overcast eyes.

In hospitallers’ whites
tight jerkins still unstained,
not long, as the clouds rain
thunder. And in Fenrir’s
very face they don
their armor, but for it all
are swept under the rush
of the Waters
and the roars
of Leviathan.