At the Oncology Center

Here we sit, a collection of souls

arranged in a line of easy chairs,

tended by three guardian angels

who cheerfully administer the poisons

we need for a few more months--

or perhaps a lifetime.  Who knows?

Today the place is grimly quiet,

absent the brave chatter of other days:

some of us asleep, others simply still,

passing through hours we hope to forget,

with burdens seemingly difficult to share,

each of us poised over our fate in silence,

trying to measure the future

in dimensions of hope or despair.

Theology

“God is only a name for our wonder.”

                               -- Alfred Kazin, Journals

It is not so much a matter

of whether he is or is not,

but what we think he is about:

why not a phoebe before dawn,

butterflies on a summer afternoon,

or a painting by Frida;

Beethoven’s quartet in A minor,

some unexpected kindness,

or quatrains from dear Emily?

In short, he lives in all the gifts

(like asters at the end of summer)

that we cannot explain,

which are of this world,

and, equally, of places still unseen.

Thoughts at the End of Summer

I’m listening to Brahms,

those somber passages

of the Clarinet Quintet,

and posed on my lap is a page

of sober verses from Mary Oliver.

As the days are inexorably shorter,

every thought seems poised,  

to point me away from August,

and tonight, outside my window

the cicadas are in full concert,

a movement towards autumn,

a diminishing, a farewell;

but who can say

if this is a lesser gift?

Purposes

There is a grand tree,

the tallest in its grove,

not far from my back door,

most likely a walnut,

and just clinging to life,

sending out only a few leaves

in this dry summer,

and at once I am curious:

what does a tree know?

There is no answer

to this perhaps silly question--

but it could be like me,

who knows that the end

is not a forever away,

but close enough to loom,

and like that tree

I am still struggling

to put out new growth,

aiming to be of some use,

though maybe not so well

as my neighbor, the tree,

which has not forgotten

how to welcome the birds.

On the Eve of a Memorial Service

(for Hugh James Bustin, Jr., 1924-2016)

I came here to mourn (or so I told myself),

but this is no place to write an elegy:

the quiet waters of Cedar Pond,

its flotilla of geese, and the black ducks

floating in their matrimonial ease

refuse to countenance sorrow.

The happy notes of a song sparrow,

the endless chant of a yellowthroat

and that confident singer, the mockingbird,

all conspire to sway my thoughts

from consideration of loss,

and solemnity seems unlikely.

Even those pedestrian singers,

the house sparrow and the redwing,

will not let me dwell for long

on a life now missing;

all this sight and sound pushing me

towards some unwilled celebration,

and at last I surrender:
mourning will wait for another day.