Intensive Care
(for Betsy)
I sometimes think that the
ferocity of my desire
will hold back the disease,
if I can read enough
and stuff your hands with articles I’ve found,
that I will somehow stop its spread,
that I can get you out of all the
cutting, burning, poisoning
they do to kill and save you,
that I can hold tightly enough
to keep you safe from them, and it,
and trade my tears for years,
when doctors give you months.
I sometimes think . . . But mostly I’m aware
(though I may try to push
the thoughts away)
that all that I can do is pray, and sit
and wait
and see if you survive.
Remembrance
I found a gift for Betsy in Beijing,
but momentary triumph was dispelled
by sudden recollection.
How long has she been gone?
She was alive the year I got laid off,
and we saw one more Christmas after that,
so fourteen months—not long enough
to break the habits of long friendship,
Twenty years of thinking always of another’s joy,
of celebrating, phone calls, finding gifts.
She would have loved this, too—the workmanship, the beauty
—though the love that brought it home would please her most,
and I can see her smile.
Though some part of my brain insists she can’t be gone,
I put the bauble down, sorry, yet glad for the remembrance.
