The weeds relax after last night’s
rain and it’s easy to pull them up.
There’s a bunch in my hand
when John comes home with lunch.
He lifts the top of the clam-shell
container and shows me a salmon
filet pink as our climbing rose.
“You’re happy out here,” he says.
I murmur yes. Happy? In our
rebellious youth, we despised
that word and would quote
the ancients, sometimes
ironically, “Though suffering
comes knowledge.” Yet now
I say, Happy and rest
my head on John’s broad chest,
where under the skin his
CardioMessenger Smart
forces his heart to beat.
A heart that cannot
beat even once on its own.
In the afternoon when the sun
has lost its heat, I walk again up
steep Centre Street to White Park
and think, If I find him dead,
when I get home, my last words
will not sting me with regret.
