LATE IN THE DAY
Late in the day when my father lay dying,
he called me to his cot and told me of
a time when I saved his life. Saved your life?
I said, not believing him. Then he said:
do you remember that time at Widow’s
Lake when, like a fool, I got in water,
thinking it would make my bad back better,
but as I lay on my side, unable to move,
and felt myself tipping, back side up,
face down in water, I saw you walking
on water beside me and called out your
name and asked for your hand. You were
only five. If you hadn’t been there that
day, that would have been the day I died.
*
MY NEIGHBOR GETS A CANCER DIAGNOSIS
What’s it like to know cancer sneaks like
a tongue of smoke around the back doors
of your life, peeking in windows between
the shadows, snaking around corners,
sniffing and moaning; wanting your suffering.
My neighbor at sixty retires, done with chemo
for now, decides to babysit his three-year-old
granddaughter, Daisy. Days, I watch them
totter down the street, his bulky hand sunk
sealed to the fresh flesh of her reached-up hand.
Or see him mowing the grass, going over and
over the bright, green stalks, not knowing when
that menace will force its fierce, forked tongue
up from soft ground to take him down again.
*
Lisa Low’s essays, book reviews, and interviews have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, The Tupelo Quarterly, and The Adroit Journal. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of literary journals, among them Valparaiso Poetry Review, Pennsylvania English, Phoebe, American Journal of Poetry, Delmarva Review, and Tusculum Review.
