Persistent chill is setting dirt in trays of ice,

but cubes melt quickly in the sun.

Pink and purple Hyacinths jet index fingers

through the earth. Our maple tree

needs trimming soon to duck the wind.

I text a friend who’s taken home a chemo pump—

some sick belated birthday gift she doesn’t want,

both a blessing and a curse.

She calls me back; we talk for hours.

A tear has landed on my lip—it’s drying there

like flakes of oatmeal left behind.

 

She doesn’t speak of cancer in her liver bed.

She has a god in every drawer

of every dresser in the house.

I can smell the potpourri from miles away.

Her son has come to say awhile, brings her

plates of wet green grapes.

She says, “I’m cold and so are they.”

His retort, “Let me put them in your mouth;

my fingers can undo the shivers in your spine.”

She laughs, but he is serious.

I can hear his bleating heart,

singing through this tragic time

 

My worry is an earwig crawling up the sheets—

I see its pincers heading for my pale arm.

Don’t put down the telephone;

I’m acting like dead batteries,

when she needs one that’s fully charged.

“I’d rather be in separate beds because of pain,

because my mother slept in here,”

she whispers like a cotton ball

that never really makes a sound.

“There are other ways to love.”

I tell her what she’s always known.

Her husband cleans his garden tools like silverware.

Honeysuckle, weed-less yards so smooth

they could be putting greens, will soon appear.

The smell of grass comes through a window cracked for air.

 

I look outside at ivy vines that a climb a tree

despite the fickle weather here—forcing us

to pull out sweaters once again,

put summer shirts we drew too soon

back in plastic storage tubs.

Despite the chimes of suffering,

she sings the sweetest aria upon a stage

I’m checking out for slippery spots.

Courage is a sherbet dish of rainbow colors,

holding firm, yet up against the August heat.

I try to clip my burnt desire

to keep her through infinity.

 

Look again through windowpanes,

roll up all these heavy blinds,

their ancient carpets growing mold.

Hunt for Calla Lilies now,

their flawless swirls, their curled leaves.

My fingers ache to hold a trowel,

take its strong familiar spoon,

pick and dig until it’s time

to put white daisies in a nest.

 

Pass her scents of lavender;

leave the squirts of spraying skunks

for cloying forests out of sight.

Give her counterpoints to death,

trust a scarlet climbing rose

to scale the dry and leaning fence.