The Call

The phone rings softly.
The moon is a constant friend.
So much to say, Love.

More Snow

Even laughing hurts
after the mountains of snow
are shoveled away.

Shoveling Solo

On nights alone like this,
February is most beautiful.

The moon reflects the bluish snow
as I toss shadows of weightless worry
over the banks with my plastic shovel
balanced perfectly in my over-mittened hands.

It is 11 degrees and the slightest wind
blows frozen misty feathers
back into my face.
I am delighted at how fresh it feels
to have this ocean of white
rise like a tide in Maine.

But we are in Vermont tonight,
near the fullest moon in February,
and I nearly howl I am so happy to be shoveling
with no artificial illumination
to block my view of the sky.

No Matter

Perhaps God will strike me down
for the skittering mind that has me bargaining
for my own life.

Is it blasphemy to want to be spared,
or at least ask for no harm to come to my father
or my own vintage flesh?

I have brushed with death a thousand times
and clamber for more of that suffering
it seems impossible to measure.

Today, when the end of my life seems approachable,
I linger at the doorway and pray for the cells to reverse themselves
and give up my love for only the one who will love me
no matter what.

Inconclusive

This round of testing
is like hazing.

The medical professionals
churn and turn you around
with words like benign and papilloma,
the narration of a story we've all heard before.

There is no good ending for the yokel daft enough
to believe they have come to this medical mecca
for healing.

The oration of each practitioner
uses postures and procedures
that dwell in the obscene.

In the beginning all I want are answers.

By the time I leave, all I want is my life
to be in the same simple body
I will eventually leave behind.

Forgive Me

This is just to say
that I am waiting for the lab results
that they told me would arrive
no later than Tuesday

and which we are hoping
tell us the tissue they removed
is benign.

Forgive me, I am distracted,
and my mind is a jumbled,
so worried
and so very tired.

-nodding to Dr. William Carlos Williams

Two Days After

Two days after the whipping of the biopsy
I am sobered at the bruised and blemished
diagnostic damage to my breast.

The skin is mingled with purple,
or nearly black,
where it once was milky and soft.

When I carried my babies in a sling
near this locket of love,
I testified with conviction
that my body was a miracle.

Even now, my faith is not splintered
and I will not plunder my hope on fear.

My body, a miracle to have given so much life.

Still it has room to make more love
with the spectacular abyss of this stranger
in these intimate cells.