Haruspicy

In good old Greece, to read futures in entrails,
The scatter of bird bones and guts on a beach—
All day they shuttled you from floor to floor
Through narrows—CAT scan, X ray, MRI—
And then some canisters of chalky, endless
Barium you had to drink for lunch.
And then the murmur of the last contraption,
The room quite cold, below ground.
It doesn't look good, quoth the white-coated seer.
But the bone scan was fascinating: stars
And hails fixing, falling through black sky.
Or drifting in a sea, inching forward with tides,
Approaching us as if we were a shore.
I showed you the screen when the test was through.
Oh yes! you almost shouted,
Neither one of us entirely surprised.

Copyright © 2007 Sarah Hannah All rights reserved
from the Southern Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission