I Started to Write about the Frog Pond

 
The line between negative and positive
wavers below the surface, ever balancing.
Something plops, unseen, in the shade.
I say I am fine when really I’m wailing
inside. God damn it, this isn’t fair. I feel
the cancer’s growth, imagine eternity
winking her left eye at me as if to say
it’s quiet here. Join me. I’m not ready
for that. What, then, do I desire?
My right hand often works counter
to the left. I have learned to shrug
it off, much to my bureaucratic soul’s
dismay and my imagination’s disdain
for reality. You are under no obligation
to picture this, in fact you shouldn’t,
but I want my wife to press her naked
thighs against my ears as she whoops
and invokes the name of the patron saint
of orgasms. I want to spill red wine on
a white carpet, eat cookies in bed. I want
to fertilize weeds, watch them blossom.
I want to memorize the name of every
frog in the pond. I want to read all twenty
volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Twice. But I’m starting to wheeze at night,
pain keeps announcing itself in unexpected
regions, and the immunotherapy infusions
seem to be feeding rather than razing
the tumors. I fear that a heavy thumb
is tipping the scales in zero’s direction.
There ain’t no here there, and I am so
limited these days. In time, in patience,
in body. The frog pond is of course
a metaphor, yet it exists three miles
from my house, teeming with life.
Oozing, messy life. How I want
to watch it go on. How I want to go on.

*

The Purity of Starch

 
Betrayal or spark, I cannot refuse this
course. One thought, the merest breeze,
and I imagine days with books lying open
on pine stumps, caught in a wavering
dream of wildflowers and perfumed
hair, of short nights and tangled
sheets, the lemon-half moon hovering
overhead. This is too much. It is never
enough. I want the purity of heavy starch,
the stillness of sanctity, of certainty
in discretion and falsehood strummed
true. I want this flaw healed. I want
skin on skin, tongue to tongue, and
unuttered words seared through flesh
and into bone in that chamber where
everything is nothing, and implication
drills deeper than truth, truer than love,
and only we remain hidden at its core.
But morning’s news carries warnings
of rising waters and wreckage washed
downstream, and as I listen to recordings
of your voice, because that is what I have
today, I sip coffee and wait, knowing
the emptying begins in this moment, now.

*

If Not Grief

 
Sometimes I think of what I am losing.
How emptiness fills the day.
And grief lines this quiet space.
Your body, lying next to mine.
The fine hairs on your cheek
whispering my name.
Our love.

***

(Featured image from Pexels)