A year ago
when I learned melanoma had moved in
to claim my friend Jane’s body,
shutting down her liver and lungs,
clogging up her bloodstream and her brain,
I lit a candle on my writing desk,
held vigil with my pen.

Out the window snow was falling – thick white flakes
softening the stubby ground, covering over
neglected corners packed with decaying leaves,
shawling bare limbs in cotton.

Beautiful! I say to a colleague on the phone,
both of us cozy in our homes, not about to
brave the sliding streets, the threat of
freezing rain and sleet predicted.

Enjoy! she answers back, and because
we are home for good, we say we will,

while Jane, a few miles away,
in a hospital room, surrounded by her
grown-up children, begins the work
of separation. Her sons and daughter

still grieve the loss of their father, just a year before.
They hardly recognize this weakened, needy woman
in the bed, who has never known frailty, except
that singular time when the truck plucked
her off her touring bike in Bemidji Minnesota,
cutting short her trans-continental trek,
right around the bend of her seventieth year.

And even knowing Jane’s body is steeped in pain,
and knowing her spirit is prying itself loose
- to everyone’s shock and horror -
even so, I am drawn to the white flakes falling,
with the same delight that lifted my heart
when I was six and sixteen,
yes, even now, at sixty-six.

If Jane weren’t already about the work of separation,
wouldn’t she sit up in her hospital bed,
point with joy at the beauty, exclaim in wonder: Look!