CLEARING THE SKY

(For two long years my husband battled Central Nervous System Lymphoma, an insidious form of brain cancer that until recently had no viable treatment. He is now in total remission. I wrote this two months after he'd completed twenty-four disruptions of the blood-brain barrier to administer chemotherapy directly into his brain.)

CLEARING THE SKY 

I watch you from the back yard on this first day of sunshine after the long rains. You move towards the ridge and the white bones of four Douglas Fir stripped by a drought that lasted seven years.

They write their lost lives upon the sky.

You stride. I cannot find the weakness in your step although I know that it is not completely gone. The chainsaw echoes, scattering the birds. You notch the dead wood.

I want to say "be careful," because I've heard how trees can fall upon a man. But I am silent. I know you have stood many times where death visits.

You move to the opposite side of the towering bone, and the chain saw screams through the dead wood. The first tree falls.

            The next and then the next.

            The breaking of small branches on the living trees.

            The thud against the forest floor.

You do not see me where I stand. You do not even know I'm there.

The last dead tree--thick around as your own body, tall as twenty of you standing atop each other:

            It is a ghost-ship's mast.

            It is the totem carved of doubts

            It is the pen of Death, etching the sky.

You look up to the disappearing point.

You bend and notch the wood.

You make the cut.

The tree stands.

You gather up your power, and you push against the thick white trunk.

You make it fall.

You clear the sky.

copyright © 2004, Christin Lore Weber.