May 24, 2016

the odds

There is a man in Colorado on his last legs with liver cancer, and even though
I don't know him, I know someone who does, and that is enough to win me a spot
on his cheerleading squad, rooting for the long shot of a comeback. Around me,
strangers bearing tinctures, prayers, websites, the names of doctors and patients
who licked the odds, remedies a thousand years old, and I'm thinking,
if enough of us come, the noise alone will rouse his body to the field again.
It is so green where we have gathered, spring clambering over itself, the air
damp with expectation. We've brought reinforcements in the event of rain -
Hail Marys hidden in our pockets - and we will stand here, shoulder against shoulder,
lobbing everything we have until the light goes down, and then late past it, just in case.