Cancer poem #5.

Cancer poem #5

   First, some weekend nurse
   springs on you some hope
   for your hair. Then your best friend,
   after all these years, tells
   you to be grateful, calls you
   vain. But when you're
   shedding like a collie--
   the pillowcase a road map,
   thin antennae on the sliced apples,
   a rat's nest in the bathroom garbage
   and all of the floors needing
   to be swept swept swept--
   it's like saying goodbye
   all day long. Meantime, I've
   watched you greet the poison
   with merely a turning away
   of your head which is stubble
   as of last night, a mowed cornfield
   with scattered tufts of stray stalk
   which while you slept
   I turned to and said hello.
   If you need me to
   I can do that for you
   all night long.