Your Voice in the Chemo Room

There is a white stone cliff over a dropping slope

sliced along with bare trees.

In the center of the cliff is a round dry fountain

of polished stone. By seizing my whole body up

as I clench my hand I am able to open

the fountain into a drain, revealing below it

the sky, the trees, a brown and uncertain ground.

This is how my heart works, you see?

This is how love works? Have some sympathy

for the great spasms with which I must open

myself to love and close again, and open.

And if I leapt into the fountain, there is just no

telling: I might sever myself clean, or crack

the gold bloom of my head, and I don’t know

onto what uncertain ground I might fold like a sack.