The Landscape

Michelle, who shares every detail of the day, scared stiff but benign, three times; Kathleen who tease--same; Rosemary who doesn't always trust me--surgery in late January; Mom--lumpectomy, the drain, six weeks radiation driving herself daily, lymph nodes cut, circulation cut, movement curtailed; for Mordena, who nursed, add chemo; Rebecca, a silver knife--more chemo, lost hair, bone deep fatigue; Ingie next door, Sue in Ohio, the librarian with the red and white scarf--mastectomy, radiation, chemo; Linda (Ingie's daughter)--chemo until her legs wouldn't lift;

on lucky days, on days when a woman is blessed with no children to gather and disburse, no geese to lure across the hard brown dirt, no wash to lift and wring and beat, no men to appease, she can lie by the side of a shadowed stream, her blouse loosened so the sun scoops under her breasts; she can bring her body down by a quiet river; she can lie at the edges of the earth; she can leave the earth;

when I leave the earth, a cat yowls; I walk up to the woman at the library and say, I saw you in my dream, standing behind this desk; she clasps my hands between hers, large and dry; she invites me to touch her breast, the one that's left; I let my hand be lifted; her nipple talks to my thumb, a crow announcing supremacy; continents swirl and melt; one of us is Atlas.

Deborah Bacharach

Arts & Letters Fall 2009