Pain’s Both Calm and Quarrelsome

Altercations alternate
With peaceable, silent lulls.

This could be true of your friends,
Family, lovers, or pets.

This could be true of nations.
This could be true of weather.

Is the alternation law?
Does every life alternate

Between loud quarrels and calm?
Is it the nature of things

Themselves, volcanos, oceans,
Chronic viral infections?

On a dove-grey afternoon,
A hermit by the wayside

Wonders whether any calm
Is a storm at the right scale.

That’s how you write of flowers
In pain in the hospital.