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Your fortieth vomit of the day was pale clear yellowy green, and smelled warm and sweet. You lay in your oily sweat and soiled sheets, and wouldn't bear to be changed. A priest came to ask you how you felt. Fine. No good news came. Time dissolved our fearlessness away. Mercy of death or madness did not come. I record this: fear and fearlessness were the same. Poem of the mother whose young son has cancer It's a strong box this dread is locked in, but every hand brushes unseen latches to secret openings, each large enough to show me dread's size and its restless motion. Eyes are quick: no denying this dread is bigger than my heart, stronger than my right arm. A woman I know believed, when she flew to her child's dead side, her touch would raise him. What saves my son won't be so easy to find, so I'm -- oh, dashing, rummaging; I'm praying, sweating; holding this dread locked in silence; crying loud in the shower; I tire some days and quiet down, and eyes around say after the shrieks and the hot staggering after firefly hope: how well she looks at rest in that cool bed, despair. * * * bright knot in the stream of fire, occasion for intricate knowing, I brought out of the cave and safe to now this bony scaffold for your growth, trellis for your exploring. I wove from meat and air tendrils along it, instruments for our counterpoint. Out of expendable seed and blood I made out of my bones I fed you for my rare play, my costly delight. who wove the beast in? I look long at the luminous skin that keeps the cosmos out, you in. Reading its shifting codes in dwindling lines I see your fear and shame illuminate mine. Continue In Love With the Angel |
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