November, Sky Full of Bruises

the way the light pulls away, night closes in early.
My friend is entering the hospital for six weeks
of isolation. They will pull the marrow from her bones,
let it leak out slowly the way this November light leaves,
then transplant it back to her body for the long wait,
for the white cells to grow from a few flakes to intermittent
flurries to a steady snowstorm, white & pure.
Alone, in a clean well-lit room, to cultivate the secret heart
of whiteness, to look ahead to a season called recovery.
But now she enters the long tunnel, burrows in for sleep.

November, and the light leaves early.
The woods are bare, trees stripped
to their bones. The earth is silent,
waiting for snow.

Breasts

Men would think of melons, hard white moons,
but women know breasts are soft,
a well-washed quilt with satin edging, a pillow of feathers,
a bowl filled with cream. For that's what we are, tenderness
and comfort. A warm bed on a black night. Sweet milk
for a new baby, rosebud fists in a cotton gown.
My friend's small lump has turned into nightmare.
How can she agree to let them slice that part of herself
as casually as slipping a knife in a melon?

She Tells The Dealer, Three More Cards

A thin sickle moon hangs in the western sky
over the house where my friend used to live.
Her blood count decreases, as cancer deals
her another bad hand. Her backbone is turning
to ivory dust; her platelet counts diminish
in spite of transfusions. The sky is a vault
of black ice; the starry dust of the Milky Way
flung over our heads, Wisconsin to Pennsylvania.
She is buying new clothes for spring, a ring
of blue topaz to wear at night. She has backed
dark horses before, long shots going out at 100:1,
and won. She plays blackjack, shoots craps, gets comped
at Reno. Even though these odds are stacked
for the dealer, the house, she keeps on playing,
rolls the dice, rattles them bones.

^

Biography

The three poems published here are included The White Poems, due shortly from Barnwood Press, Indiana.

Barbara Crooker has had her poetry published in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Christian Science Monitor, River City, Yankee, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Yarrow, West Branch, The Denver Quarterly, Poet & Critic, Country Journal, America, Zone 3, Passages North, Negative Capability, Karamu, Light, The Madison Review, The Pennsylvania Review, Phoebe, Red Brick Review, Highlights for Children, Caprice, Small Pond, Appalachia, and others. Her books include Writing Home (Gehry Press), l983 Starting from Zero (Great Elm Press and Foothills Publishing),1987 Looking For The Comet Halley (Dawn Valley Press).