way to drink again from the ordinary days. My head

was shampooed and I was told to let nothing

pass my lips. Everyone said good-bye

and rushed to pick up things that

weren’t there. The day went gray

and those who love me envisioned

the side they alone can see.

At four, our surgeon, face safe as a globe.

They pulled the IV. It bled for a while.

There was one more test. The bleeding stopped.

One more specialist. He was out of town.

They sent us home. I walked right out.

We ate with friends and slept at home

and woke to familiar noises

in the trees. We prayed every night.

I continued to feel well, whole, unaffected,

confused. The tests were mounting: X-ray, ultrasound,

CAT scan, MRI, bone marrow, tubes and tubes of blood,

an angiogram where they snaked the magic thread

into my brain, coaxing me to hold still,

despite the heat, hold still. A week

went by, and back in, laid out as if sleeping

while a bearded man slid needles in my head, a style

he learned in Sweden, three times, four times, and

shakily, he squirted, smeared and dunked the fluid

from my mind. That night we prayed, the flower

from Lipa on my heart, then on my head. To my God.

To her God. Whatever it will be. Let us heal.

The next day, an open biopsy while awake, peering

at the anesthetist, sitting on her stool with her

plastic valves, asking, “How do you feel?” Beneath

the sterile drapes, “How do you feel?” Their steps

were so soft. What did I feel? What odorless colors

were vapors from my head? I was sent home

with a flowered cap to gauze up my stitches.

The operation has been cancelled. I tell you

I feel fine. They tell me it is cancer and tomorrow

I begin six weeks of radiation, glancing blows,

five burns a week. The side effects, they say,

are trivial: a sunburn in the ear, along

the roof of mouth, a dizzy sensation perhaps

like losing one’s grip. Will it stop me from

hearing as I reach? “You have no choice,”

the oncologist says, “the treatment

is the miracle. Without it—Lord!

The house would fall.” He’s seen it all,

“You’re with us now for life.” He holds me

up, “There’s months of chemo and checkups

and blood tests down the line.”

Why can’t I forge a faith other than through pain?

We change the dressing now each night. Oh why

do roots burn in our Gethsemane?

Tonight, in voices half as loud,

we think of God as another day

and like the Jews spit out into the desert,

we hope we can endure the miracle

as we suffer what we pray.

Tu Fu’s Reappearance

TU FU’S REAPPEARANCE

The great Chinese poet Tu Fu (712–770)

has appeared to me in dreams

as a guide.

Out of the yellow mist