poems-diagnosis

DIAGNOSIS

The pink scab on your back

where they removed

some skin will grow back to be a mole.

Moles do that.

A delicate angioma,

red and irregular under your left eye,

is there for good.

Nothing to worry about.

When you die, I will not know the names of any flowering trees.

At the gas station where we stop

to use the bathroom you see nothing

you want to eat, until, in the next aisle, Twix.

Ah!

One night at dinner you pick

out every piece of bacon from a ragout

and slide them, carefully, to the lip

of your plate without comment.

I will keep the gold compass necklace from your Aunt Frani, but that is about it.

The long white fault

line on your forearm – a trip

and fall – is broken by your watch,

still staunchly keeping time.

Narrowed down to its essential points

in slim black leggings

your body looks like a dancer’s.

In a hug, you are fragile as wings.

The Yeats poem you love, with the bee-loud glade, is one thing I know by heart.

There is not a single thread of grey anywhere in your hair.

I have begun, already, to remember you.