Cancer

In the fall, she draws inward
her thoughts her voice

pulled in. The sound of her
own beating heart, a quiet shh

of sound, grows slowly silent. The art
of loss so perfected, that mind

and memory will ease once again into
hibernation, burying roots in

deeper channels —

Is it winter that forgets her, or does
the body forget itself? At the last

its knot-spined trunk will exhale
the frozen air. Immersed in solitude

its thousand pores, will knit rings into
themselves and feather away the last

clinging leaves. And their absence,
fluttering in the air, will pulse

painfully, like a living thing.