In the waiting room
I notice my doctor’s a painter, his name scrawled
in the corner of a canvas depicting
two mountains, a country church, and a streaked sky.

And the painting is not on a wall
but on an easel thrust out like a hip
into the room, at hip level;

and on the TV overhead is a woman who wants to be
a millionaire, trying to decide
whether the Heaven Above company is in the business
of placing a loved one’s ashes inside a firework, or,
inside a stuffed animal.
C or B. She cannot decide.

She cannot decide and the wait
is interminable; she wants it to be
B, stuffed animal; minutes and minutes go by
as she twists herself, in her striped shirt
and her denim jacket, into one answer and then
the other, smiling, grimacing, smiling again; she wants
that sweetness, maybe, even more than the money.

This is my country. My doctor
has painted the sky over his church a daring, devotional red
and I imagine my mother or maybe my beautiful red-headed sister
blazing across it: a starry final act.

And by then, at last, the woman contestant has it—reluctantly
C, she says, final answer. To which the host,
creating suspense, says, as slowly as possible, You were all over the place,
but you thought it through.
And you, my dear, yes. You came through.

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