In Praise of Cancer
For giving her those first six weeks
of summer, doing crosswords on the porch
in a kimono worn so thin the morning light
and birdsong could move through it. For drowsy
afternoons in chemo, reading magazines,
and for the nurses who could slip a needle
underneath the paper of her skin as easily
as a lover's name into a conversation.
For allowing us to see her as a girl again,
a stringbean, then a downy-headed infant,
curling in upon herself for sleep, and finally
as something luminous, desiring. For sending us
the unseasonable snow that dawdled
in the autumn foliage the day we drove
through the White Mountains past
Robert Frost's house, pausing long enough
for her to say, And that has made all
the difference. For the afternoon I brought her
home, exhausted, from the hospital and lay
her down to nap on that same porch
whose screens were now dissolved in late
October's radiance, and for the sleep
she sank into so gratefully a smile
shone like water on her thin, dry lips.
For taking what it had to take so casually
at first—an appetite for olives, windfall
hair. For being quick and greedy at the end.