After I get an MRI the plumber installs a new thermocouple, by Laurel Benjamin

Mississippi River Abstraction, by Will Henry Stevens (USA) 1944

After I get an MRI the plumber installs a new thermocouple 
 
He crouches on the cement in front of our water heater, 
twisting his head, flashlight clipped 
to his cap, with the afternoon
settling into him. Who knows how many jobs 
he’s covered already, work truck 
plunging the streets of El Cerrito.
He runs through the details like he’s training me 
to become a genius about metal-to-metal connection 
and I feel like I’m still in the machine. 
 
Earlier, in a medical room, 
they locked a cage on my head to steady, instructed 
shallow breaths and my body, 
pushed into the narrow vestibule 
where clicks made are not from a small wrench 
and the metallic chink chink clunk clunk 
reminded me of a rock concert where earplugs 
did nothing. 
 
And I gulped between tones, 
saw cubes of blue and green and a circular shape 
like Steven’s Mississippi, how his watercolored rounds
combined with squares, each object 
unto itself but also part of something larger, and then, 
a hint of salmon and always 
flax, always rust. A way of seeing 
not possible for the ordinary. 
 
The results have come into the health portal 
but I’ll wait for the doctor, 
an expert just like the plumber 
who explains they make the unit this way 
so not just anyone can get in here, as he inserts the screws 
by hand, closing the access panel 
to the heater, then pushes 
the line aside 
navigating the industry
that is his own, where close by, 
turrets safeguard a citadel 
and a light ignited 
will gift us.
 
Is the heater popping, tapping, rumbling, he asks.
No. 
Then he unwinds the new thermocouple, 
threads its copper coil through the opening.
This magnetic beauty. 
And I wonder 
about the results of my test and whether 
I have a brain tumor and 
how long I have to live, or whether 
it’s nerves behind the ear like the doctor said. 

Laurel Benjamin

Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area native, where she invented a secret language with her brother. She has work in Lily Poetry Review, Burningword, Eunoia, Glassworks, South Florida Poetry Journal, Fourth River. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and Ekphrastic Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College. She is a reader for Common Ground Review and has featured in the Lily Poetry Review Salon.
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