Five Attempts at Hope Present

 

 

This poem started with this tree, which sits without its top in our back yard. It was decapitated by a storm before we moved into the house. While my daughters played in the snow, I stood and scanned this tree from the bottom up, realizing that each time I do this I feel gutted when I get to the top and there is no more of it. Wrapped up in these thoughts are my unregistered feelings about my husband's recent cancer diagnosis and chemo treatments. We learned he's getting the full dose and recovering well from it each cycle. I hang on such phrases. 

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Five Attempts at Hope Present

i. 

                    When I found out,
the birds flew in slow-motion

silence. White rooms and phone

calls began to bead together

the hours. 

ii. 

                        Sun heats skin 

to sweat and stomachs to storm.

Husband is getting the full dose

and bouncing back like a cat,

they say. I hoard these words.

iii.

When I found out, I painted
circles concentric on the patio

and scraped them into an epic

rock opera the sun would covet.

iv. 

Snowballs and sunshine calm limbs.

Each time I look at the backyard tree

decapitated by a derecho long 
before we moved into this house 
I break. On days queasy with doubt

v.

I don't look at that tree. My husband 

is getting the full dose--a cat 

leaping out of a snowstorm.
Avert heart--watch the white powder 

piling on the bird feeder. Chickadee
bores its song deep into my pupils.

vi. 

When the performance ends,
I rage from the heart side out,

adhere my hands to his hands, 

feel sad only at the sink.

Powder falls, a cyclic melody.

Future sits firmly in this minute.