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Steve Straight
Biopsy Before the oncologist calls with the results, and we hear whether my wife will have to endure another two years of surgery, radiation, and chemo sickness, her hair falling out in clumps, white cell count dropping precipitously––or worse or not we pretend to vacation by the lake, and I notice the lone maple turning orange and red prematurely, the dark clot of cloud moving over us, and down in the middle of the lake, someone’s unmoored raft drifting with the current. After the call and the tears and the hugs and more tears only then do I see the pair of loons circling each other across the lake, the newly opened waterlilies by the shore, sunlight replacing shade as the cloud moves north and when my wife flings the ice cubes from her drink over her shoulder into the lake, the tiny rings spread out in perfect concentricity until eventually the surface returns to glass.
2020
