FOR WHEN YOUR MOTHER HAS BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER

You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared.

A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind;
it has left in its wake a strange lucidity.

How privileged you are, to be passionately
clinging to what you love;
the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.

This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us.
Surely it is a privilege to approach the end
still believing in something.

- Louise Gluck, October

This is just to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold -William Carlos Williams

Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,

I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with

those women that are warm-blooded and

sufficient for me;

I see that they understand me, and do not deny me;

I see that they are worthy of me - I will be the

robust husband of those women.

They are not one jot less than I am,

They are tann’d in the face by shining suns and

blowing winds,

Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and

strength,

They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend

themselves,

They are ultimate in their own right - they are calm,

clear, well-possess’d of themselves.

-a woman waits for me, walt whitman